Awards

This dissertation examines how two genres of painting, yaji tu 雅集圖 (elegant gathering paintings) and huanji tu 宦蹟圖 (pictorial autobiographies of officials), functioned as cultural and political instruments in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Ming China. Commissioned by high-ranking court officials, these paintings served as visual strategies for constructing and projecting idealised identities within the competitive and hierarchical Ming bureaucracy, transcending mere aesthetic expression. Despite their circulation, these paintings have rarely been studied systematically for what they reveal about elite self-representation, political networking, and moral philosophy during a pivotal period in Chinese history.

The dissertation argues that yaji tu and huanji tu underwent a critical transformation in the mid-Ming period. In the domain of portraiture, these two genres of paintings have elevated contemporary figures into the realm of cultural memory and moral exemplarity. The representations enabled officials to create lasting visual legacies based not only on individual achievement but also on shared values and elite solidarity.

This study employs an interdisciplinary approach that integrates visual analysis, social history, and intellectual history to delineate three fundamental purposes of these works:
1) Mapping Bureaucratic Networks: Yaji tu depicted gatherings of senior officials bound by regional, educational, and official affiliations. Paintings like Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden 杏園雅集圖 and its successors visually recorded politically favourable associations, promoting shared status and reciprocal endorsement. These images served as pictorial rosters of influence, often accompanied by inscriptions and colophons that further legitimised the group.
2) Embodying Moral Philosophy: Huanji tu reflected the rise of xinxue 心學, or “learning of the heart,” championed by Wang Yangming 王陽明 (1472-1529). Officials used these autobiographical representations to stage their careers as journeys of ethical self-cultivation, drawing narrative and iconographic frameworks from instructional texts like Dijian tushuo鑑圖說. These paintings were not passive records but staged acts of visual self-fashioning, embodied assertions of virtue in a time of bureaucratic skepticism.
3) Shaping Regional Visual Cultures: The influence of these genres extended beyond Ming China. In Chosŏn Korea, huanji tu influenced the pyeongsaengdo 平生圖, while yaji tu inspired kyehoedo 契會圖, both of which adapted the Chinese model to the Korean settings of Confucian ethics and official commemoration.

By contextualising yaji tu and huanji tu within broader discourses of moral authority, political legitimacy, and visual self-fashioning, the dissertation reframes these paintings as dynamic instruments of social power and memory. It offers a new perspective on Ming political culture and highlights the transregional legacy of its visual strategies in early modern East Asia.