Exploring The Origins Of Female Chinese Traditional Landscape Artists In The Ming And Qing Dynasties

The history of traditional Chinese landscape painting can be referred as men’s painting history. Not only the women painters being outside of the mainstream, but also had they been no influences at all. In that era and its cultural background, women being its specific social status, could only be accompanying men. From The painting history of Yu Tai and partial of the preserved women’s paintings, we may only distinguish their skills. There is hardly any distinction in their paintings from men’s. All they could express in their paintings were the landscapes in their mind, or, what they imagined, as the real world is far from where they could reach. That made the hills and waters in their paintings usually similar to the men’s arts that they learned from. Thus no stunning realistic paintings were ever made by women.As Tao Yongbai and Li Shi wrote in the book Lost Histories——The Chinese female painting:"We do not present history. History presents itself. We broke silence in the history to be part of it." Although the achivement women made in landscape paintings was far behind what men did, their contribution could not be sublate, which was always ignored. Female painters were not able to make a high status, but they helped widen the history. This article is trying to organize and list women painters from Ming and Qing Dynasties, analyze their painting particularities, the reasons behind those particularities, and their social status, through their products. In addition, comparing chamber lady painters and prostitute painters and digging through women landscape paintings’ artistic charm are parts of this article as well, to further prospect the future of women landscape painters, the power they possess and the influence they can bring to this industry.