Orchid and rock

Ma Shouzhen was one of the celebrated Eight Beauties of Qinhuai, elite courtesans who lived and worked in Nanjing’s Qinhuai pleasure district during the late Ming dynasty. More than just entertainers or sex workers, courtesans of the Qinhuai were esteemed public figures known for their talents in music, poetry, and painting. Ma, in particular, was known for her orchid paintings. After the fall of the Ming, the Eight Beauties became emblems of a lost past, and they were often invoked with reverent nostalgia. Ma maintained a decades-long relationship with the scholar Wang Zhideng, who inscribed this scroll at upper left—they are considered one of the classic “beauty-and-scholar” (jiaren caizi) romances of Chinese history.