The Icon of Gardens: How Seventeenth-century Women Painters in Jiangnan Constructed and Developed their Public Personae and Artistic Identities.

摘要

There was a sudden explosion in the number of women writers and painters in the seventeenth century as well as in the construction of gardens in Jiangnan. These phenomena have become important research topics. To date, studies of women painters were often confined to their biographical data, education, and choice of painting style and subject matter. These painters were then grouped under two categories: courtesan and gentry woman. The choice of painting style and subject matter between the two categories were then compared. Moreover, due to a lack of materials, research on how women participated in garden activities is limited to only a few case studies.;This dissertation will extend beyond that scope to discuss women painters as individuals and investigate the significance of their work based on their individual needs within the unique historical, cultural, and social context of the seventeenth century. The discussion will focus on their paintings, writings as well as the social circles with which she associated. This dissertation also suggests that we should not only treat a garden as a physical space, but rather as an icon of gardens. By presenting an image of a garden (which does not have to represent an actual garden or the whole garden), the audience will automatically make associations with a host of ideologies and meanings encompassed by the image.;Through cases studies of Ma Shouzhen (1548--1604), Xue Susu (active 1570--1620), Wen Shu (1595--1634), Liu Rushi (1618--1664), Li Yin (c1610--1685) and Huang Yuanjie (active 1630--1650), this dissertation demonstrates that women painters did not choose a certain painting style or subject matter solely to express themselves as courtesans or gentry women. Rather, such choices were made based on each individual 's need to create a public persona. Those choices might not have been totally deliberate, and were often conditioned by each woman's social status and the expectations placed upon her by society. From this study we learn that the painters also took an active role in constructing and developing their personae in addition to receiving help by men in their social circles. Women's active participation in this process became more obvious during the fall of the Ming dynasty and the Manchu invasion. Moreover, since garden culture was a prevalent phenomenon during the seventeenth century, women painters often made use of it in the process of developing their public personae and artistic identities.;Through this dissertation, we can learn how women used the icon of gardens to construct their public personae and how they actually participated in the garden culture. We also learn that the public persona of a woman painter was made up of her artistic identity as well as the status group to which she belonged and with which she associated. However, her public persona also affected how others judged her art and how others perceived her artistic identity and status. Hence, there is an interrelationship and interdependency among public personae, artistic identities and social status during the seventeenth century.