Palace Ladies
copy after Qiu Ying (Chinese, 1494–1552)
1644–1911
- Medium
- handscroll; ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 36.2 x 454.4 cm (14 1/4 x 178 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Gift of I. Theodore Kahn
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This handscroll illustrates the pursuits of court ladies in a palace precinct on a spring day. Women, young girls, and their maids amuse themselves by sitting on a swing, playing games, watering and admiring peonies, performing music together, playing the qin (zither), feeding a parrot on the balustrade and fish in the water, or catching butterflies. The life of elite women was mostly restricted to the so-called inner quarters, meaning the garden and inner courts of the house. This painting idealizes the world of young palace girls that in fact was often filled with boredom and waiting for a lover.
