Lady Awaiting in a Garden

Resting at a desk, a lady is passing time with leisure activities in a garden. Although she has the company of
 her attendant, she appears emotionally lonely and unhappy, as suggested by the poetry inscribed above. The lyric text, titled Guisi (Boudoir Lament) and compiled by the renowned female poet Li Qingzhao (1084–1155), belonged to a distinctive genre of classical Chinese literature which conveys a lady’s loneliness as she anxiously waits in the inner quarter and pines for her husband’s return. The lyrics “a thousand threads of sorrow writhing with but an inch of tender intestine” vividly portray the mood of anxiety and sadness and evoke the viewers’ empathetic response to the image.
 

A Nanjing artist, Xu Lele renders scenes from classical novels, yet the figures appear languid and soft, sometimes naive-looking. Her distinctive style is comparable to that of the influential eccentric painter Chen Hongshou (1598–1652). Chen was particularly skilled in depicting archaistic figures with decorative colors and exaggerated, almost distorted curvy lines. Xu’s paintings often carry a bitter tinge of nostalgia or a touch of escapism from the present. Her figures often have “neutral” facial expressions, but their inner emotions are suggested by subtle body gestures.