An eight generation portrait on canvas. Shanxi province, around 1850. Ancestor portraits come in all sizes and qualities, from the rich and the poor. I call this one "the boors". It's a marvelous family chronicle, the story of how eight generations long toiling and moiling led to nothing. Here are no famous ancestors to inspire later generations. You could curse yourself to be born within this family. There seems to have been a small peak in prosperity though at some point. In the third generation one of the males had two wives. In the fourth generation there were seven women for four men and one of them even appears to be wearing a badge, sign for an official rank. In the next generation there was just one man who had two wives and what comes after that is not worth mentioning. This portrait hasn't been painted by a skilled artist; they couldn't afford. The result is a tower of figures without individual features. Are they related? Well, they look very similar. And yet in all it's simplicity this is a very charming painting in nice shades of color. Mounted on a frame. Dim.: WxH 219x131 cm.