In China portraiture has been long an established genre, considered different from other categories of figure painting by virtue of realistic representation. A xiao-xiang-hua (portrait) could be understood as a record of certain aspects of a person as seen by another. Whether his physical appearance, social position or spirit has been captured by artist is of little consequence, the underlying conception of portraiture as likeness in Chinese culture requires that a portrait should reveal some sense of the sitter’s identity as a particular being.

Since the Song, apart from court portraits, commemorative and ancestor effigies, other modes of portraiture, for instance, emblematic portraits or portraits as event were fostered principally under the influence of the literati aesthetic, by the wish to enhance the figure’s spirit, and to a much lesser extent by interest in realistic representation as such. Chinese portraiture continued to suffer this antagonism between lifelikeness and spiritual animation until modern times.

Traditionally, scholars often conclude that Shanghai School paintings reflect mainly a tendency of commercial products, as auspicious themes, popular stories and playful birds-and-flowers were commonly painted. Their work also intended to present a cheerful tonality in a certain format, so as to meet the demand of middle class commissioners. Thus viewers seem hardly sense the internal and external tensions that were shaking the roots of traditional China from the images that Shanghai artists produced. However, while the external tensions brought by the foreign connections and technology pushed the traditional boundaries of Chinese portraiture further, the choice between lifelikeness and spiritual animation was no longer the only concern. Shanghai School obviously reflected the shifts and conflicts of its time.

From 1840 onwards, increased colonial expansion, production and changing economic conditions fuelled visual competition among artists in Shanghai for commercial and cultural dominance. Paintings, especially portraits by Shanghai School artists, namely Ren Bonian (1840-1895) and Wu Youru (1839-1897), developed as an interesting venue for displaying prowess in aesthetical, commercial and cultural arenas while promoting the fame and identity of the sitters for various purposes. New publications from the West and the local press provided coverage of contemporary events and revealed unfamiliar people and customs to readers living in an age of heightened curiosity and rapid transformation. The imported foreign technologies, photography in particular, also encouraged a new phase on portrayal themes in Shanghai painting.

This paper first focuses on the practice of the early photography in the late nineteenth century Shanghai. By discussing the relationship between photographic presentation and painted portraiture, and the diversity of depicting their subjects, we wish to explore the reality, identity and competition that are shown through different ways of representation.