AN INSIDE-PAINTED CRYSTAL 'LADY AND SCHOLAR' SNUFF BOTTLE GAN XUANWEN, QING DYNASTY, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Trojan Collection.
Robert Hall, London, 1993. 

Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 372.
Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1997.
Christie’s London, 1999.

Robert Hall, Chinese Snuff Bottles V: From the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Trojan, London, 1992, cat. no. 88.
Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 4, Hong Kong, 2000, no. 461.

The bottle has a couple of tiny flakes to the inner lip and the outer footrim. The foot has another polished chip. There are two natural veinings to the neck. There are also slight wear from use, especially to the top of the narrow side panels. The interior has some fine spoon scratches and slight wear to the colours and paintings.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The two inscriptions are from the Yuan-dynasty play Xixiang ji 西廂記 (Story of the Western Wing). The full passage, often cited as language whose beauty more than compensates for the fact that it describes lovemaking, reads 軟玉溫香抱滿懷，春至人間花弄色，露滴牡丹開 (‘Soft jade, warm and fragrant, fills his embrace; when spring arrives in the human world, the flowers flash their charms; dew drips, the peony opens’). The bottle quotes only the first two lines.

There can be no doubt as to the authorship of this painting, even though there is no signature. It is typical of Gan’s landscape art in every way. It also has one of his characteristic trees, where trunk and branches, made up of dark but not black ink, are surrounded by a pale grey wash. This wash is often barely noticeable unless under magnification. Here, it is to the left of the house, behind the seated scholar.

Slight snuff wear has reduced the clarity of these washes on this bottle; they are so pale as to be the first to suffer from long contact with snuff. But they are still visible, as are Gan’s typical mountain peaks. The well-foliated nearby peaks in russet washes and dark modelling strokes are offset against distant peaks made up of a very pale, watery-blue wash, which has created its own intriguing inner texture as it dried on the surface of the crystal.

Whenever this bottle was painted, it extends Gan’s oeuvre into the realm of large-scale figure painting. There are four known early-school portraits: this one, Sale 9, lot 3, a portrait of a European sailor holding a sword (JICSBS, Spring 1991, p. 16, fig. 22), and one in Hui, Polak, and Sin 1991, no. 167, also illustrated in JICSBS, Spring 1991, p. 20, figs. 52 and 53, a profile portrait of a brutally ugly and alarmingly well-built woman, unless burly sailors wore flowers in their hair in those days. The portrait of the European sailor with his sword can be attributable to Gan without hesitation on the strength of the landscape on the other main side. This seems to demonstrate beyond a doubt that Gan painted Western figures as well as the charming Chinese woman depicted on this example.