Lighting a stick of incense, we face the picture of the ancestor which is displayed on the ancestral shrine, and silently offer a prayer. Even though their souls are forever separated from us, through the agency of this image with its spiritual power, it seems as if the ancestors are constantly protecting each generation of their descendants, observing the growth and extension of the bloodline_

If you've always thought you looked different from the rest of your family, then maybe the solution to the puzzle lies in the ancestral portraits.

Twenty-five year-old Amy (Tsai Chia-mei) is a second-generation Chinese immigrant born and raised in the United States. Ever since she was very young, she complained that her face, round as a pie, was so much different from her parents', her brothers' and sisters', and even her grandparents'.

One summer a few years ago, Amy came back to Taiwan for summer camp. When she visited her family home in Taipei, and saw the portrait of her great-grandmother on the ancestral altar, she cried out in surprise and delight: "Now I've got it! I know who I look like! I look like my great-grandmother!" Even though Amy knew that the spirits of the entire Tsai family ancestors resided in the tablets worshipped on the altar, it was the ancestral portraits, bearing a semblance to herself, which really made her understand more concretely that she was part of the extended life of her ancestors.

Ten generations in one family hall

Ancestral portraits are a kind of representational folk art. In the era before photography, people called representational painting, "realistic depiction" or "conveying the spirit." The ancestral portraits included in this art were called "happiness gods." When a portrait of the deceased was made, it was called "lifting off the cloth," as this required removing the sheet from the face. A portrait executed based on memory of the deceased when alive was called a "remembered image." Portraying three or five generations of ancestors together was known as a "generational chart." It seems that a representational painting of "five generations together in one family hall" has never appeared in the West; this shows that these ancestral paintings not only show individual achievements, but also illustrate the greater importance for Chinese people of keeping a record of the ancestral line.

In Ilan, whenever the Yang family has a big day of housecleaning of their old residence before the Chinese New Years', they can sweep around the sacred ancestral table, which ordinarily cannot be touched. Everybody in the household, young and old, is busy airing out the portraits of family grandees which had been stored in a wooden box, as well as going out into the courtyard to wash and wipe four or five generations of ancestral portraits which had all been hanging on the wall of the great hall. In this way, at the New Year, they can invite all the ancestors in all the lines of descent to spend the holiday together; from the Founding Ancestor on Taiwan, and the Fifth or Sixth Generation Ancestor, to Great-Grandfather and Grandfather-ten generations all together in one family hall makes for an auspicious and exciting event!

A traditional ancestral portrait is done with ink and color. The old portrait masters call them "Colors." These ancestral portraits, almost life-sized, were done mostly for those forebears who had achieved eminence or had served as officials. Shih Yun-chung, who lives near Chihkan Lou in Tainan City, has six portraits of officials in his family. Shih Yun-chung, who is 72 years old this year, raises his thumbs and says, "Shih Shih-jung, our Founding Ancestor in Taiwan, was a rich merchant in Tainan during the Qing Dynasty. Because he built bridges and roads, and also because he effectively opposed piracy, he frequently received honorary positions from the court and was appointed to office at the second degree of rank." Shih Yun-chung carefully tells of his ancestor's merit, while pointing out the ornamental courtly insignia depicted in fine and colorful detail on the painting; the long fingernails, demonstrating that this was a person who didn't need to do any heavy manual labor; and the gold flake decoration which is seen on many parts of the picture, are all details which combine to proclaim the awesome glory of the Shih family's power in former days.

"Paint" a photo

In this way, the ancestral portraits passed down from one generation to another not only document the lineage's past, but also, between the brush and the ink, reflect the aesthetic ideas of the majority of Chinese people. According to the Englishman Barlow's A Journey in China, the British emissaries once presented a portrait to Emperor Qianlong. An important minister in the court pointed out the shadow of the nose as portrayed in the painting and said, "A flaw in the jade! it's really a shame!"

Though it's normal for a nose which has a degree of elevation from the face to cast a shadow, Chinese people think that this sort of detail with light and shadow is not part of the essential complexion of the human face; it will hinder our observation of an individual's appearance. For this reason, the portrait masters often say that the best conditions for painting somebody's portrait are the soft light of a cloudy day without sun, so that one can leave behind a calm and eternal painted likeness.

At the end of the Qing Dynasty, photography came to China. Because it wasn't very common, folk portrait masters came up with a new genre of "painted photographs," done with graphite. The use of light and shadow in painting entered alongside of photography, and brought a whole new style. In an era which still did not have color photos, the portrait masters used graphite and added pigments for color, so that they could "paint" a color photograph for peoples' ancestors, one whose colors would never fade. Even up until now, although some portrait masters have substituted oil paints for graphite, they still emphasize a brush with a continuous, fine line which imitates photographic effects.

A photograph is no substitute

In the early part of the 20th century, small, portable cameras became available. This was a monumental shock, to which artists and portrait masters allied in opposition. They demanded that photography be forbidden. However, the portraits that everybody thought weren't ever going to be needed anymore didn't disappear just because of this. Even today, throughout Taiwan, there are still more than 20 portrait masters making pictures for people.

The invention of graphite paintings in the past was in order to imitate photography which was still not common. However, nowadays it's not strange for individuals to have hundreds or thousands of photos taken of them throughout their life. Why has graphite portraiture, an imitation of photography, been able to survive this development?

Each portrait master can give dozens of vivid, lively examples as an answer to this question. Near Taipei City's Yuanhuan area, in the "One Brushstroke Studio" which has been operating for more than 50 years, the second generation proprietor, Chang Chen-hsiang, is painting a portrait; on the left side of the easel are pinned two photographs. One photo is of the deceased at around age 50, full of energy. The other is a photo of the deceased after suffering a stroke, just before death. The photo at age 50 is too young, but the one after the stroke shows the eyebrows drooping and the mouth twisted in a grimace. In such a case, it depends on the portrait master to combine the two, in order to manufacture a memorial picture which will suit the wishes of the family.

Smoothing life's regrets and defects

"There are too few photographs taken of older people. It's always group photos taken of all the family. The ladies generally are holding children; sometimes they wear clothing that's not particularly dignified looking. All these need us to do a portrait," Chang Lien-ti, the older portrait master of One Brushstroke Studio, adds in explanation. Usually they keep a magnifying glass attached to the side of the easel, kept trained on that photo of some dozen people together in a group, carefully peering at that head the size of a mung bean. After the head is drawn, the portrait master will need to add a long robe or a suit for the men, a Chinese or Western dress for the ladies. Sometimes, at the request of the client, a gold necklace or ring is added, the subject is made to sit at a formal chair associated with seniority, a vase with flowers is placed beside him or her, or scenes typical of an upper status Chinese family are arranged by the portrait master's brush. The surviving descendants always want the deceased elderly to have everything they didn't have in their lifetime; from now on there is no need for them to strain and work.

Fan Yuan-piao, a portrait master whose business is located in Yungho, once fulfilled a father's request to go to his house to do the portrait of his child who had just died. The child was only six or seven years old, and had died of electrocution. Fan Yuan-piao photographed the child's face and returned to his studio. Although the child's facial features were very distorted, the painter's experience was vast, and so on paper the face recovered its original youthful, sweet smile. When the child's mother saw the portrait, she was overwhelmed with weeping. . . . In this way, the portrait master's work is occupied with smoothing over the regrets and defects of life.

Something out of nothing

Before the Chinese New Year this year, a middle-aged man living in Hsinchu took photographs of his father and three uncles to One Brushstroke Studio. The person he wanted painted wasn't any of the ones shown in the pictures, but was his grandfather, who had never had a photo taken.

Generally it doesn't take more than a day and a half to finish painting a portrait, but this one, relying on recollected memory for its completion, took more than two months before it was declared perfect. In the course of the work, the son who had commissioned the portrait brought his father, nearly 70 years old, from Hsinchu three times. The first time was to see the portrait master's pencil sketch of the linear outline of the face, based on the common features of the family; when the facial details were finished, they came again for the second time. They felt the mouth should be slightly larger, the sides of the face slightly thinner. "This way of doing portraiture is the hardest, because only the patrons have seen the subject; not to mention that they are family, who are familiar with the subject in daily life. Just a small mistake on the part of the painter will make the portrait seem strange to them," says Chang Chiu-hsia, the studio's only female portrait painter. She also smiles and compares this sort of process in portraiture to pictures of criminals drawn by the police according to the accounts of eyewitnesses.

Imminently vanishing portraiture

Finally, the portrait is finished, but the client still feels there is something wrong. It turns out that the older gentleman's father died when he was 50, but currently this gentleman is nearly 70. Seeing the portrait of his father so much younger than he is makes him feel strange, so the portrait master adds quite a bit of white hair to the picture. At this, the older gentleman is greatly satisfied, because the portrait master did not merely paint his father's appearance, but also painted his father at the age he should be as he exists in his mind. And because a portrait master can provide many services which photographs are unable to offer, business is pretty good for folk artists doing memorial portraits. If you want to go to One Brushstroke Studio now and commission a portrait, you'll have to wait three months before you can get it!

Although business is good, not many portrait masters look on memorial painting as a good job. In the past, portrait artists couldn't "make a sales pitch" when looking for business, since the only time one would go into such a studio was when there was a death in the family. Some younger people want to have a portrait done for the parents, but are scolded by them, "I haven't 'kicked off' yet, what do you need my picture for?" These days, people's attitudes have changed; many young couples will ask a portrait master to paint their beloved, to be a gift of "love." There are also those who seek out the portrait artist every year to paint a memorial picture.

Currently, a black-and-white portrait is around NT$3500, and a color portrait is about NT$5000. An especially difficult case would require an additional 50% fee. Taking roughly fifteen paintings a month for sake of calculation, a portrait master's income is about upper middle range. However, young people these days cannot submit to the difficulties of a job which requires them to stand all day with their arms raised, facing a photo which they must look at without becoming impatient. This is also a reason portrait masters worry that they may not have any successors, even though there is more business at the old studios than they can handle.

Six brushes to paint the eyes

Presently, most folk memorial portraits are handed down from father to son. Although there is no set method of painting, generally they begin with drawing the eyes; this is called, "opening the eyes."

On this day, portrait master Chang Chen-hsiang shows us how he does the eyes. In a studio with an area of two pings, open to the street, portraits of famous people such as Vivian Leigh or Prsident Eisenhower are hung on the walls as advertisements. Particularly noticeable is the portrait of the painter Chang Ta-chien, with that white beard, each strand of which can be clearly seen, as if it is being wafted. Chang Lien-ti and his son Chang Chen-hsiang and daughter Chang Chiu-hsia are absorbed in their painting at their easels, without looking up at the crowds of people pushing by or the noise of the cars on the street around them.

In the painter's workbox there are 40 or 50 brushes, a box of graphite powder, some tufts of cotton. Chang Chen-hsiang first uses a brush with the bristles in a point, to paint the outline of the pupil, then uses another brush with the bristles slightly splayed out to spread the graphite powder, to give the eyelids depth. Then he uses a duckbill brush attached to an eraser, an "eraser-brush," to draw out crows' feet around the eyes following anatomical principles for the musculature. Whenever any graphite dust gets onto the paper, Chang Chen-hsiang uses a large, very loose brush to brush it away with lightning speed, and then proceeds to paint.

Very quickly, in a few minutes' time, a soulful, expressive eye comes to life on the paper. Subsequently, the portrait master uses a hard brush, one that has been entirely covered with sizing, to paint each hair of the eyebrow, and then softens the eyebrow's lines with a soft brush. All told, one eye has required six brushes.

"This is habitual work, but if the expression is realistic, one feels the drawing has spirit." Ninety-three-year-old portrait master Huang Ching-shan of Tainan feels that portraiture should be painted in such a way that when the viewer stands in a position the subject should seem to be watching, but when the viewer shifts to another position, the subject should still be watching. Only this kind of portrait conveys the spirit.

Huang Ching-shan is a famous portrait master in Taiwan. He has taught several hundred students, although he can't remember the exact number. He has also executed many tens of thousands of portraits. For example, fabulously wealthy dry goods dealers in Tainan, the originator of Tainan noodle snacks, and many foreign principals of the century-old Changjung High School have all had their portraits rendered by his skillful hands.

Not one is near-sighted

However, each different pair of eyes requires different touches, in terms of the depth of the wrinkles around the eyes, the density of the eyebrows, and the use of the brush. Huang Ching-shan's son, Huang Chun-hua, casually picks up a brush at random and paints quite a few different models of eyes: eyes with rather bulging lids are "boat belly eyes"; kinds that are equally protruding and have rather long corners are "bow-shaped eyes"; long sides are "leaf eyes"; round eyes with fish-tail patterns are "goldfish eyes." Huang Chun-hua feels that he has seen a lot of people; most portrait masters can see a person's character through his or her facial features. It would seem that if a portrait master were to take up a new job as a physiognomist and tell people's fortunes, they could probably descry some occult secrets for their clients.

In the course of interviewing several portrait masters throughout Taiwan, what one most wonders about is why, from 93 year-old Huang Ching-shan, to 73 year-old Chang Lien-ti, to the second generation of Chang Chen-hsiang, Chang Chiu-hsia, and Huang Chun-hua, not one of them wears glasses. Huang Ching-shan by now is already retired, and has turned the studio over to his son; he devotes himself entirely to purely artistic creation. At 93 years of age, he is still full of energy, and his eyesight is perfect. He is rushing to ready an exhibit of his paintings slated for next year, which will realize a longstanding wish of his. The 73 year-old Chang Lien-ti says, "We use our eyes much more than other people, but I still don't need glasses to read a newspaper."

What's the secret? Chang Chiu-hsia smiles and says, "The more you use your eyes the better they get, but haven't you heard what they say on television: after forty-five minutes or so of viewing, you've got to rest a bit. The rest is very important!" So after about an hour of painting, Chang Lien-ti always puts down his brush and goes to walk around nearby. And Chang Chiu-hsia looks out at a distance across the street to see what's happening there. At noon, Chang Lien-ti unfolds his collapsible lounger and takes a little nap in his small studio space.

A story for every picture

The new portrait on the easel is half-finished. A neighbor passes by and can't help asking Chang Chen-hsiang, "How could you be painting a communist? And in the 8th Route Army!" It turned out that it was a photograph of an old veteran who at the age of 18 had joined the 8th Route Army.

"Because when the mainlanders came over they were in a big hurry, photos are even more precious to them, so there are even more of them who come to our studio," explains Chang Chiu-hsia. Especially since visits to mainland kin have been permitted, many mainlanders of the older generation who have gone home to visit family have become major customers of the portrait artists. Portrait master Fan Yuan-piao remember how not long after family visits to the mainland were made legal, an old fellow with the dialect of a northern province brought a bundle of broken porcelain fragments to him. The two of them pieced together the jigsaw puzzle, and it was this old gentleman's mother's "porcelain portrait." Back in those days, the old gentleman's family had been quite prominent; in the chaos of the war, he had been lucky enough to escape to Taiwan with the government. The family left behind, during the mainland's political campaigns, had burned most of their photographs themselves; only this porcelain portrait had been buried in the earth, and now it fortunately had been recovered.

There was also an old gentleman who brought in a photograph of himself and his wife, as well as photographs of his three brothers and sisters scattered on the mainland, and of his parents who had already died. He asked the portrait artist to paint them a "group picture" which had never taken place in actuality. In this business, every case conceals a little story from a great epoch.

p.44

The Founding Ancestor on Taiwan, the Fifth- and Sixth-generation Ancestors, the Great-great-grandfather-each ancient ancestral portrait is stored in its wooden box, silently recounting the proud history of Tainan's Shih family.

p.45

Through an ancestral portrait in which one finds a semblance to oneself, members of the succeeding generation can understand even more concretely that they are a part of the extended life of their ancestors.

p.46

"Our ancestors were appointed to an office of the second rank!" Shih Yun-chung proudly declares, standing beside the portrait of the Founding Ancestor on Taiwan.

p.47

Cutting out the likeness of the forebear's head and pasting it onto an already-printed portrait is called "pasting the head." This lazy man's portrait process gives you an ancestral portrait on the cheap, but with the passing of time the ancestor's head always comes off.

p.48

So many yellowed photos of so many famous people, all who have had their portraits done by the old portrait master, Huang Ching-shan.

p.49

"One Brushstroke Studio," located near Taipei's Yuanhuan; the three artists working in the shop with this old name are all skilled experts at ancestral painting. From the left, the father Chang Lien-ti, his daughter Chang Chiu-hsia, and son Chang Chen-hsiang.

p.50

Sharp head, flat head, hard brush, soft brush: a little paintbox, several dozen brushes; they have demanded the painter's youthful energies in training, and they leave behind an eternal memorial portrait.

p.51

The portrait artist Huang Chun-hua is absorbed in his work as he uses oil colors on a raw silk canvas; no matter whether it's graphite, pastels, or oils, he can use them to paint a picture which will be as realistic as a photograph.

p.52

An elderly fellow more than 70 years old holds this old photograph which he has treasured for many years, to ask the portrait artist to bring back his lost youth.

"Our ancestors were appointed to an office of the second rank!" Shih Yun -chung proudly declares, standing beside the portrait of the Founding Ancestor on Taiwa n.

Cutting out the likeness of the forebear's head and pasting it onto an already-printed portrait is called "pasting the head." This lazy man's portrait process gives you an ancestral portrait on the cheap, but with the passing of time the ancestor's head always comes off.

So many yellowed photos of so many famous people, all who have had their portraits done by the old portrait master, Huang Ching-shan.

"One Brushstroke Studio," located near Taipei's Yuanhuan; the three artists working in the shop with this old name are all skilled experts at ancestral painting. From the left, the father Chang Lien-ti, his daughte r Chang Chiu-hsia, and son Chang Chen-hsiang.

Sharp head, flat head, hard brush, soft brush: a little paintbox, several dozen brushes; they have demanded the painter's youthful energies in training, and they leave behind an eternal memorial portrait.

The portrait artist Huang Chun-hua is absorbed in his work as he uses oil colors on a raw silk canvas; no matter whether it's graphite, pastels, or oils, he can use them to paint a picture which will be as realistic as a photograph.

An elderly fellow more than 70 years old holds this old photograph which he has treasured for many years, to ask the portrait artist to bring back his lost youth.