Portrait of Prince Guo (1697-1738)

Artist Mangguli (Manchu, 1672-1736)

Date1729

MediumHanging scroll; ink and color on silk

DimensionsImage: 84 5/8 × 52 3/4 inches (214.96 × 133.99 cm)
Mount: 145 × 61 1/2 inches (368.3 × 156.21 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number33-1534

SignedSignature of artist on rock at right.

On View

Not on view

Collections

East Asian Art

Terms

DescriptionPrince Guo, named Yinli, 17th son of Kangxi Emperor, dressed in a purple robe and seated in a garden among rocks and trees.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Costumes from the Forbidden City, Metropolitan Museum of Art, February-July 1945.

"Manchu Court Art, Stanford (CA) University Museum, mid-November 1954-February 6, 1955.

Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting, Nelson-Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, November 7, 1980 – January 4, 1981; The Cleveland Museum of Art, February 7 – April 5, 1981; The Asia Society, December 3, 1981 – February 28, 1982; Tokyo National Museum, October 4 – November 17, 1982, no. 260.

Chinese New Year exhibition, (in conjunction with the Great Ball of China I), The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, December 20, 1995- February 4, 1996.

Treasures of China, The Museum at the George Bush Presidential Library, College Station, Texas, August 30, 2003- December 31, 2003.

Faces from China’s Past: Paintings for Entertainment and Remembrance, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, April 28, 2012- September 2, 2012.

Gallery Label

Prince Guo — son, brother, and uncle of three consecutive Qing dynasty emperors — served in several imperial positions. This portrait is one of the extant paintings that show his cultivation of art and culture. Mangguli, a high-ranking Manchu painter, portrayed Prince Guo’s facial features using European shading methods. The artist used traditional Chinese outlining in the clothing. The prince poses on a pile of garden rocks typical of scholars’ gardens. The bamboo in the background symbolizes nobility. In the inscription Prince Guo writes about taking pleasure in forests and streams. Traditionally, Chinese scholars see landscapes like this as ideal settings for self-cultivation.

Provenance

Purchased through Laurence Sickman by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.

Published References

Jean E. Mailey, “Ancestors and Tomb Robes”, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, XXI (Nov. 1963, 101-115): 103.

Wai-Kam Ho, et al., Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. (The Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, c1980), 352, no. 260.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 332.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 373, fig. 278.

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