AN INSIDE-PAINTED CRYSTAL 'BOYS' SNUFF BOTTLE YE ZHONGSAN, 1898

Wing Hing, Hong Kong, 1986. 

Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, 1987, cat. no. 273.
Kleine Schätze aus China. Snuff bottles—Sammlung von Mary und George Bloch erstmals in Österreich, Creditanstalt, Vienna, 1993.
Christie’s London, 1999.

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. 518.

There is a natural flaw of approx. 1.5 cm to the stone at the foot. The bottle is otherwise in overall very good condition, with only some expected minor surface scratches and the inside painting well preserved.
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In an earlier publication, it was suggested that this was an early nineteenth-century plain crystal brought to Ye for painting by a client. This is unlikely for three reasons. There appears to be no unpainted crystal bottles of this shape to suggest that it existed as a plain form in crystal; the bright crystal and the detailing are sufficiently similar to Sale 1, lot 71, and Sale 7, lot 44, to suggest they may have been made by the same workshop; and, perhaps most convincingly, these waisted panels on each main side are ideal picture frames but make less sense for a plain bottle.

Panels of this shape are common enough in pictorial inlays in screens and furniture and even on ceramics from the Qing dynasty. They are taken from the shape of certain fancy windows designed to frame the ‘paintings’ of nature beyond the window.

It is perhaps more likely that as Ye gained in artistic power and the demand for his works increased accordingly, as it obviously did from 1895 onwards, he began to have fancier crystal bottles made and charge more for his works.

Although the subject of the boy on the water buffalo is a repeat of Zhou’s; it appears in a similar pose but with varied settings on Sale 5, lot 30 and Sale 8, lot 1125. Regardless of the model, there could be no question here that it is Ye’s hand on the brush, with or without the signature.

The three children on the foreground bank are Ye’s addition. They carry with them the paraphernalia that centres on fighting crickets, each insect being contained in a summer ‘cage’ consisting of a cylindrical box, usually made of a fired refined clay with a heavy flat lid.

The trees look rather stark here, particularly the pine, but this is because the colours have faded a bit, which also gives the impression that the far bank is made up only of the black dabs for grass, whereas in fact there is a pale blue wash behind them.

The unusual shape of the bright crystal and the delicate painting make this one of Ye’s more intriguing bottles from the year 1898.