Gu Shao

• Gu Shao was a female painter of the Qing dynasty and the daughter of the artist Gu Luo. She inherited her father’s artistic legacy and was particularly skilled in gongbi-style paintings of court ladies. Her subjects included figures, flowers, and children at play. Representative works include the silk-and-color painting Figure Painting and the hanging scroll Small Portrait of Liu Rushi in a Headscarf. The former is noted for its meticulous brushwork and vivid spirit, while the latter conveys a refined literati temperament through the depiction of broad sleeves, a scholar’s headscarf, and serene facial features. As a leading figure among boudoir women painters, Gu Shao established her practice on the foundation of familial transmission and, within a male-dominated art world, continued the finely detailed stylistic tradition of the Gu family school.