What to Remember Her By? A Case of a Female Effigy Portrait in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

This paper reconsiders the way in which a woman is remembered in her informal effigy portrait commissioned by her surviving husband, and the dynamic of its perception by its intended audience in late imperial China. Through a case study of a rare extant eighteenth-century example, the Lady Xiao Album, I examine how such a female effigy portrait was connected to her husband's mourning act that had largely become a recognizable social, cultural instance. The album highlights the theme of lamenting over Lady Xiao's premature death through the inclusion of extensive mourning literature by both her husband and his esteemed literati friends that focuses on the mourner rather than the mourned. Participating in this project, her main portrait is rendered in a manner that immortalises her as an idealized and romantic female without personal characterization. The portrait not only publicly announces her husband's remembrance of her, but also commemorates his mourning act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]