The Domestic: original oil painting portrait by Jian Bai Xu (1958)

Young girls have always been the mainstay of domestic help, no matter what century, no matter what country. This is a window through time to see what domestic help, in China, the folks, not the gentry, looked like during a time when China was shut off from the rest of the world, in the 1950's. She has a stern, perhaps untrusting, look, in her eyes, yet her attempt at sternness cannot hide the fact that she is a pretty, young girl, not yet a woman.

She is also wearing what appears to be the traditional female Chinese dress from that era, the Qi Pao Dress. Her hair is tied back, in a ponytail, a style that is much a part of China, even today. It is a simple, small but beautiful portrait, done in the mid-1900's impressionist style that Jian Bai Xu displays in many of her paintings. It is both a slice of life and a slice of Chinese modern art, in the middle of the 20th century, to be hung upon your wall.

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