Powerful Portraits Capture China's Empress Dowager Intrigue ... "This was the last of the imperial dynasties of China," he explains. "This was the end of 2,000 years of imperial reign." ...

and this innovation has caused quite a sensation at the Chinese Court. The painting of the portrait was suggested and the Dowager Empress's consent obtained by Mrs. Conger, wife of the United ...

In 1903, seemingly inexplicably, an American woman painted a 15-foot-tall portrait of China’s Empress Dowager Cixi, the last empress of the Qing dynasty, the lineage of hereditary rulers that ...

Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, or, in 1903, the Dowager Empress Cixi. Cixi was 68 and had ruled China for more than ... memoirs about her life in the Imperial Court. Nor are they exactly ...

Chang, who lives in exile, argues the empress brought medieval China ... portrait made little impact. “Cixi is still a negative character,” he said. Her endeavors to preserve the imperial ...

The empress dowager nodded, and the painter made her first stroke on the blank canvas. Over nine long months several portraits would be attempted. The main life-size image was to be China’s sole ...

The photographs of the Empress ... of China since 1881, maneuvering her way out of concubinage by bearing Emperor Xianfeng a male heir and then engineering a palace coup. But the imperial court ...

"This was the last of the imperial dynasties of China ... The exhibit at the Freer is called "Power Play: China's Empress Dowager." The portraits will be on view until the end of January.

"This was the last of the imperial dynasties of China ... The exhibit at the Freer is called "Power Play: China's Empress Dowager." The portraits will be on view until the end of January.