(清中早期祖宗肖像畫）This massive size ancestral portrait of an imperial member dressed in casual attire measures approximately 72 1/4” L x 42 1/4” W including the frame but not the hangers. This painting possibly was painted in the period in between Kangxi and Qianlong with fine and clean facial detail with delicate shades of gradation in skin color with the effect of different depths for the shadows. Part of this gradation of colors infused and “softly melted （暈染）” with water was done much like the traditional Chinese watercolor painting and those from the Ming portraits. Although the style of these ancestral paintings often is accredited to the adaption of the western art, the technique in some way is still very traditional. The fine detail of the face also includes the unmanned fine lines of mustache under the lower lip growing in all direction and the delicate eye lashes coming out from the upper eye lids.

The painting is painted with large areas in lavish blue, red, and brown color pigment for the costumes. The long finger nails suggest that the person's duty was not associated with the military link. The dating of the Chinese ancestral painting is a challenging one, not only because the painting might have been repainted by different generations and also because many of the paintings had been cut off to smaller sizes for easier handling, loosing any of the written calligraphy or other detail. This is in part because of the unsophisticated handling of the unskilled and untrained factory workers during the 80's through early 2000's when huge amount of such paintings, along with many other objects of old culture and relics, were exported to the West and to Europe as decorative objects for the wealthy homes when China first opened its door to the rest of the world for the sake of growing its economy world-wide.

In this painting, one can see the original painting is quite torn with lots of losses and had been re-pasted on another sheet of lighter color rice paper. This is evident also in the areas where unsophisticated new strokes and new touch-ups were done to make the painting more “complete”.

Such ancestral painting might have been placed in a special hall or room where worships happened during particular dates, such as Lunar New Year, etc. The scale of this painting shows that this painting was hung at a large hall where only special lucrative class might have the access and use for such large space and events.

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