portraiture

It looks like there is another photograph of the same portrait. Photograph of a portrait of the Empress Dowager The painting may also belong to the Smithsonian.

The Smithsonian has a huge collection of negative plates taken for the empress dowager Cixi by court photograhers. It would be great if these photographs are posted as well.

soooo cool and what a great name 'Arthur Bell' lol

Rather dead eyes hasn't he ....

Looks rather like Jamie Bell, alias Billy Elliott. Related, perhaps?

Really reminds of Ben Miller from Armstrong & Miller!!

Degenerate and killer number one!

Not a degenerate or a killer. Actually a man who gave his entire life to the struggle to create better living conditions and a better world for ordinary people. Thank goodness he was around to stop the Nazis when the British and American governments were falling over themselves to appease Hitler. Long live the glorious memory of JV Stalin!

No, Stalin is animal and fascist! Stalin together with Hitler occupied Poland and after this animal has attacked Finland and the Baltic states! Stalin the same idiot and the murderer as Hitler!

Labelling a man an animal is similar to the way the Hitlerites characterised the slavs and Russians in the build up to WWII, and bares similarity to the way the west is today trying to dehumanize muslims and arabs. When you dehamanize people it becomes possible to commit genocide, like today in Palestine. The people of europe and the world have learnt this lesson and it is why JV Stalin is still revered and his memory chrished by the poor and oppressed. Stalin and the Soviet Union liberated Poland and the Baltics from fascist tyranny, no amount of black Goebellsian propaganda can hide that fact.

You should learn history! Stalin and Hitler together occupied Poland and shot people! Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states! Stalin was companion and the best Hitler's friend! For Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Poles, Stalin, the communism and Soviet Union is too most that Hitler and fascism.