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 王习三1990款，高
Wang Xisan, One Bottle Studio, Hengshui, Hebei province, Third month of 1973 Provenance: The Eric Young Collection
Sotheby’s London, 3 March 1987, Important Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Eric Young, Part I, lot 158
Sotheby’s London, 23 March 1988, Fine Chinese Snuff Bottles, lot 208
Glass; of flattened rounded rectangular shape with a slightly flared cylindrical neck, flat lip, oval foot rim with recessed, slightly convex base, the amber coloured bottle painted on the inside with ink and watercolours to depict a continuous landscape scene of a fisherman in a half covered boat near a river bank, under a sweeping willow tree in a mountainous setting on one main side and on the reverse, a manservant sweeping in front of a pavilion, with a wutong tree in the foreground and mountains in the distance, all under the heading Wutong Xuan (‘Wutong Pavilion’), followed by the inscription ‘Executed by Wang Xisan at the One Bottle Studio in the third month of the year guichou (1973)’, followed by a seal of the artist, ‘Xisan’.
This finely executed painting by the star pupil of Ye Xiaofeng and Ye Bengqi is not unlike an ink and brush painting on a scroll of rice paper. The artistic talents of Wang Xisan are such that he is considered the leading artist of the so called ‘Mondern period’ and is a major influence on artists currently practicing the art of painting inside snuff bottles.
The scene could possibly be a take on the painting in the Shanghai Museum by the great calligrapher of the Yuan dynasty, Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), entitled ‘The Pavilion Under The Hundred Foot Wutong Tree’. This example has none of the attributes of commercialism that are evident in Wang Xisan’s later
bottles. It is executed in the style of a shan-shui (literally ‘mountains and waters’, meaning landscape) scroll painting favoured by the literati. The picture composition is perfect, especially on the side with the pavilion and tall wutong tree. The brush strokes are exquisite, with brilliant use of colour graduation of the black ink to create stunning mountainous backdrops. Similar shan-shui scenes by Wang Xisan are illustrated in Low, Sanctum II, pp. 366-368, no.331.
---From Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Sanctum Of Enlightened Respect III
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