Yangzhou was economically and culturally most vital city in 18th century China. The prominent painters in this city-Gao Fenghan, Hua Yan, Jin Nong and Luo Pingproduced their self-portraits, and put down long inscriptions on their works, which indicate a rising self-consciousness and individualism of the artists of 18th century. There are more than a half-dozen surviving portraits of Gao Fenghan(1683~1749). The images of these self-portraits reflect the eventful life of the painter. As a son of provincial scholar, he could receive a fair education on art and poetry. However, he failed in his civil examination several times, until he became a minor bureaucrat in Anhui Province in 1728. The earliest self-portrait of Gao Fenghan is dated to 1727(Fig. 1). Gao portrayed himself leaning on a rock at the edge of a seaside cliff, gazing turbulent sea and pine-clad rocky islands below and at the approaching lonely crane. Gao Fenghan contemplates his own seeming fate of strenuous isolation as if viewing from a last foothold of the ordinary world an abyss of chaos beyond the bounds of the familiar. A Turning point came in 1737. With his right hand disabled, probably the result of his imprisonment, which also marked the end of his official career, the artist was forced to begin a new life as a professional painter. In the album leaves of 1737 The Jade Screen and the Ethereal Resonance the beared artist, stands before us, his right hand holding a staff(Fig. 8). Tremulous strokes, the result of his uncertain control of his left hand, are evident everywhere, yet the total effect bears considerable charm. In Hua Yan(1682~1756)’s work of 1727 at age forty five he portrayed himself in a natural setting, seated on the ground and leaning against a rock by the side of a stream(Fig. 11). According to Huashi zupu(The Geneology of the Hua Clan), “Hua had to forsake his aspiration for the civil examination and make his living through his skill with the brush, because his family was poor …… in 1717 he travelled to the capital, and was befriended by a prominent official.” However according to his poem in his anthology Ligouji, he failed to become an official in Beijing and return to Hangzhou to begin his life as a professional painter. In the long inscription on his self-portrait, Hua identified his ‘feeble look’ with a ‘meagre crane’, his ‘aloof and uncompromising spirit’ with a ‘frosty cypress’. Jin Nong(1687~1764) was a multifaceted cultural figure as a poet, art connoisseur and calligrapher, as well as painter. Jin Nong also engaged in a broad variety of artrelated commercial activities: locating antiquities, serving as a professional connoisseur, inscribing inkstones and lanterns and selling paintings for a living. There were at least nine Jin Nong’s self-portraits from 1759 with recorded inscriptions. These were presented to his friends of various social status. Two of them were dedicated to buddhist monks while the other three were given to his disciples Luo Ping, Xiang Jun and the merchantpoet, Zhu Erting. The single work, which was handed down today is Walking with a Staff of Jin Nong dated to 1759.(Fig. 15) It is large and imposing in size, with a profile figure of Jin Nong shown holding a staff as if walking from the viewer’s left toward the right. The staff seems to point directly at the long inscription. According to the inscription, the work dedicated to his friend and seal carver Ding Jing, and the artist used the one-stroke method(baimiao fa) of Lu Danwei for the drapery and face. Luo Ping(1733~1799) is one of the most prominent disciple of Jin Nong. As a young talented artist Luo could establish himself in Yangzhou. However after the death of his master Jin Nong, Luo’s activities were centered in Beijing. The decade of the 1770s was particularly productive and successful, with a wide acquaintance in prestigious circles assured by the dual circumstances of his mentor Jin Nong’s lingering renown and the sensation caused by his own Fascination of Ghosts(Guiqu tu) scroll. Luo’s second sojourn in Beijing began in the summer of 1779. Luo Ping’s self-portrait called Coir Raincoat and Rain-hat of Bamboo Splits was completed during his second sojourn in Beijing(Fig. 16). The style is in many respects unexpected in its concern with a strong modelling of the facial planes with ink and colors. According to Luo’s inscription, the self-portrait reflects one of the alternates personae that Luo Ping adopted, the fisherman-Elder Zhang Zhihe, who was a military official and later retired to a life of wondering aboard a worn-out boat, styling himself the Old Fisherman of Mists and Waves. Luo Ping, who aspired to be a literati in his ideal identified himself with the well-known poet and hermit Zhang Zhihe in his self-portrait.