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A Chinese woman sits in a wooden chair, turned left, her gaze lowered as if thinking. A dense sweep of dark hair is pinned back in a smooth, modern coil, anchored by an orange flower and a crimson flower pressed against her ear like a private flame. Her skin is pale and softly luminous against a cool, textured gray background. Pink blush on her cheek stands out as do her deep red lips. She wears a loose bright blue top patterned with painterly blossoms in pinks, reds, and greens. It slips wide across the shoulders, exposing the long slope of her neck and chest. In her lap, she cradles a folding fan, its ribs and pleats rendered with quick, firm strokes. The overall feeling is quiet, self-contained, and tenderly guarded. Painted during Chinese artist Pan Yuliang’s (潘玉良) long Paris years, this “lady in blue” can be read as both portrait and psychological weather. Pan was born Chen Xiuqing and later known also as Zhang Yuliang before naming herself Pan Yuliang. She built her career by moving between worlds like Chinese visual traditions and European academic training, as well as the public scrutiny placed on women’s bodies and the private sovereignty of women’s interior life. By the early 1940s, war and displacement intensified that tension. The sitter’s turned-away posture resists being “met” head-on; instead, the painting offers a deliberate partialness of profile, lowered eyes, a face that is present yet not available. The fan becomes more than an accessory as a tool of rhythm and concealment or an object that can cool, shield, punctuate a pause, or mark the boundary between what is shared and what is kept. This image circulates with varying English titles and sometimes a specific year; museum listings have also recorded the date as unknown, showing how titles and dates can drift. Even so, the portrait holds steady as a study in self-possession showing a woman defined by posture, atmosphere, and deliberate restraint.
“戴花执扇的女人 (Woman with Flowers and a Folding Fan)” by 潘玉良 Pan Yuliang (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / c. 1942 - Anhui Museum (Hefei, China) #WomenInArt #PanYuliang #潘玉良 #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AnhuiMuseum #安徽博物院 #BlueskyArt #art #artText #ChineseArt #arte #ChineseArtist #WomenPaintingWomen
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At the center of this oil painting, Chinese artist Pan Yuliang (潘玉良) stands beside a table, her body angled toward the open window while her head tilts toward us. Her light-brown skin is modeled with rough, textured strokes that echo the chalky walls behind her. She wears a short-sleeved brick-red dress with a sharp yellow collar and a string of warm beads around her neck. Her black hair is swept into sculpted rolls and straight bangs. One hand rests on the tabletop beside a tall vase filled with full, blush-pink blossoms and blue-green leaves. Behind her, pale buildings and russet roofs glow in hazy daylight, framed by dark window latches and panes, so that the city outside feels distant from her calm, slightly guarded gaze. Painted in war-scarred France, Pan presents herself as a modern Chinese woman artist living abroad. The Western day dress, victory-roll hairstyle, and urban window view locate her in her adopted Paris, yet her composed stillness and unmistakably Chinese features insist on an identity that refuses to dissolve into the European scene. The sturdy vase of flowers was a motif she repeated across self-portraits and it softens the interior but also nods to the still-life subjects to which women painters were long relegated. Here that vase is pushed to the side while the artist’s own body occupies the center. Born in poverty in Yangzhou of China’s Jiangsu province on June 14, 1895 (birth name 陈秀清 / Chen Xiuqing), sold to a brothel, and later educated in Shanghai, Rome, and Paris, Pan had, by the mid-1940s, already faced public scandal in China for her unapologetic female nudes and had chosen a difficult, often lonely life of artistic independence in France. In this quiet image, she does not advertise success or glamour. Instead, the rough surfaces, muted colors, and slightly melancholy gaze record the persistence of a woman who has crossed cultures and class boundaries, claiming painting and the act of looking back at us as her enduring legacy.
“窗前自画像 (Self-portrait by the Window)” by 潘玉良 / Pan Yuliang (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / 1945 - Anhui Provincial Museum (Hefei, China) #WomenInArt #PanYuliang #潘玉良 #SelfPortrait #ChineseArt #artText #art #1940s #artwork #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AnhuiProvincialMuseum #安徽博物院 #ChineseArtist
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In this self-portrait, Pan Yuliang mimics a classical Chinese vibe wearing a black cheongsam (aka 长衫 qípáo) embroidered with white patterns while sitting with her right elbow on table covered by white tablecloth and large teal vase with bright red and lavender flowers. Her solemn eyes look directly at us with strong melancholy while her beauty is accented by bright rouge on her cheeks and lips balanced with immaculate dark eyes, eyebrows, and her hair with straight bangs pulled back behind her ears. She painted this portrait in France during World War II after Paris had fallen into enemy hands when she lived in the suburb of the city and dearly missed her motherland and relatives. Pan Yuliang (潘玉良, 1895-1977), born as Chen Xiuqing, also known as Zhang Yuliang (張玉良), is remembered as the first woman in China to paint in the Western style. She studied in Shanghai and Paris, and taught at the École des Beaux Arts. In 1985, much of her work was transported to China, and collected by the National Art Museum in Beijing and the Anhui Museum in Hefei. Despite being remembered for introducing Western paintings to China, she also provided a new lens to how women were seen through her paintings, not just as objects but as subjects. She won several awards for her work and exhibited internationally in Europe, the United States, and Japan. Significant paintings, sculptures, and prints by her are still conserved in France in the collection of the Cernuschi museum. Her life as an artist has been portrayed in novels, films, and operas in China and the United States. Her art evolved within the flux of conflicting dichotomies of East and West, tradition and modernity, male chauvinism and emerging feminism. Pan is also remembered as an artist who engaged with labels, such as "contemporary/modern," "Chinese," and "woman" artist, while also questioning them.
自画像 (Self-Portrait) by 潘玉良 Pan Yuliang (Chinese) - Oil on canvas / 1940 - Anhui Museum (Hefei, China) #womeninart #art #womanartist #artwork #portrait #fineart #selfportrait #oilpainting #womensart #panyuliang #chineseartist #潘玉良 #張玉良 #中国人 #中国艺术家 #femaleartist #portraitofawoman #anhuimuseum #安徽博物院
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