Capturing the ages

Historical icons

Highlights of the exhibition include some epoch-making male figures, such as Confucius, who encouraged scholars to serve the country rather than staying in hermitages, the Great Yu, a legendary ruler who united China in ancient times, and Zhao Kuangyin, the founder of the Song Dynasty.

Ma has also set a section to tell women's stories. Four Song-era works, including the Admonitions Scroll, are on display in the gallery and make up for a highlighted section, because the dynasty is usually seen as an apex of painting historic figures in China.

More displayed paintings from other dynasties portray famous women in China, such as Mulan, a legendary heroine who disguised herself as a man to serve in the army and became known worldwide through Disney productions based on her story, and Wang Zhaojun, one of the "four beauties "of ancient China who was honored for promoting friendship between two ethnic groups through her marriage.

"In ancient China, a lineal primogeniture system was the foundation of royal rule, so women played a key part in politics," Ma says.

"It would be unfair if we only focused on men, who are more visible in historical records, when selecting paintings of important figures."

Nevertheless, he adds, the original purpose when creating these paintings during imperial times was to exhort women to behave within certain norms and therefore restrict their rights.

"If the women in royal court executed their power within a political order and fulfilled their role in the ruling system, they would be considered virtuous by the emperor," he says.

Biographies of Exemplary Women, also a Song Dynasty facsimile of Gu's work, tells of "virtuous" stories of women, hailing them for their wisdom and kindness.

"The painting also has a huge importance for historical studies, apart from its artistic value," Ma says.

"Costumes and objects appearing in the pictures even bear characteristics from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), echoing archaeological discoveries today."

This feature may indicate that Gu also copied a painting from an earlier period. Ma says many such artists made copies of paintings of ancient figures through history due to the significance of the morals surrounding them.

However, as painters sometimes tried to display their original creativity, they accidentally fell into anachronism, depicting a different period.

For example, an exhibited Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) portrait is of Yue Fei, a Song general known for his loyalty to empire and devotion to recovering lost territory. The painter ignored Yue's traditional image in martial attire and made him sit and read a book in the painting, but mistakenly gave him a Ming official's robe.

Nevertheless, for rulers who wanted to reveal their expectations through paintings, historical accuracy from centuries earlier may not have to be their first concern, and they were sometimes dissatisfied to simply be patrons.

Zhu Zhanji (1399-1435), a Ming Dynasty emperor, was one such fine arts enthusiast. In his own painting, he portrayed the third-century royal prime minister and strategist Zhuge Liang as a man lying amid bamboo forests in leisure.

Coincidentally, in another exhibit, Zhu's portrait drawn by an anonymous Ming painter, this emperor is seen as a hunter in the wild, which further shows his longing for a free life beyond the throne.