With the Empress Dowager

In 1901, after the Eight-Nation Alliance had suppressed the Boxer Rebellion, Empress Dowager Cixi of China (1835-1918) realized that she needed to change her image in the western media. She set out to accomplish this task through diplomatic efforts combined with a personal reinvention. In 1903, the American portrait painter Katharine Augusta Carl was invited by Sarah Pike Conger, wife of the then-American Ambassador to China, to paint a portrait of Cixi. The Empress Dowager saw the St. Louis World's Fair exhibition as an opportunity to exhibit the painting, which would show the world her feminine side and improve her image from that of a mysterious dictator who loathed anything western. The portrait of Cixi was exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and then given as a gift to the U.S. government. While painting the portrait, Katharine Carl spent nine months with Cixi. This book recounts Carl’s experiences while living in the Forbidden City with the Empress Dowager. It tells the story behind a painting that has been owned since 2011 by the Smithsonian Institution's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.