The Empress Dowager As The Goddess Of Mercy.

In this painting the Empress Dowager is represented as the “Goddess of Mercy”, an attitude which she delighted to assume, with her rosary in her hand, standing upon a lotus petal and floating upon the waves of the sea. It was painted for the author by one of the leading portrait painters of Peking.

…

One day another of the Court painters came to call on me and during the conversation told me that he was painting a picture of the Empress Dowager as the Goddess of Mercy. Up to that time had not been accustomed to think of her as a Goddess of Mercy, but he told me that she not infrequently copied the gospel of that goddess with her own pen, had her portrait painted in the form of the goddess which she used as a frontispiece, bound the whole up in yellow silk or satin and gave it as a present to her favourite officials. Of course I thought at once of my collection of paintings, and said:

“How much I should like to have a picture of the Empress Dowager as the goddess of mercy.”

“I'll paint one for you,” said he.

All this conversation I soon discovered was only a diplomatic preliminary to what he had really come to tell me, which was that he had been eating fish in the palace a few days before, and had swallowed a fish-bone which had unfortunately stuck in his throat. He said that the court physicians had given him medicine to dissolve the fish-bone, but it had not been effective; he therefore wondered whether one of the physicians of my honourable country could remove it.

I took him to my friend Dr. Hopkins who lived nearby, and told him of the dilemma. The doctor set him down in front of the window, had him open his mouth, looked into his throat where he saw a small red spot, and with a pair of tweezers removed the offending fish-bone. And had it not been for this service on the part of Dr. Hopkins, I am afraid I should never have received the promised picture, for he hesitated as to the propriety of him, a court painter, doing pictures of Her Majesty for his friends. However as he often thereafter found it necessary to call Mrs. Headland to minister to his wife and children he came to the conclusion that it was proper for him to do so, and one day he brought me the picture.

-- Court Life in China, by Isaac Taylor Headland, 1909. Frontispiece and p. 90 forward.