AN INSIDE-PAINTED GLASS 'EIGHT HORSES OF MU WANG' SNUFF BOTTLE YE ZHONGSAN, 1900

Sotheby's London, 2nd July 1984, lot 293. 

Robert Kleiner, Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, British Museum, London, 1995, cat. no. 405.
Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1997.
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. 521.

There are a insignificant, almost invisible nick to the outer lip of the bottle. The painting has a few very minor, unobtrusive spoon markings, otherwise in overall very good condition.
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King Mu (r. 956 – 918 bce), is the hero of what could be considered an epic tale (rare in Chinese culture) from at least the fourth century BCE; one part of his saga has him harnessing eight mighty horses to travel about his realm on tours of inspection.

Ye began to paint horses and donkeys in 1895; among them was a painting of a Mongolian pony beneath a pine tree, shown in profile and painted in the autumn of the year (see JICSBS, Autumn 1982, p. 17, fig. 25). The first appearance of eight horses was in 1896, inside a double crystal bottle (ibid., p. 18, figs. 26 and 26a), while an example similar to this was painted in the ninth month of 1896 (ibid., p. 18, figs. 29 and 29a).

It is intriguing to note that with these horses, Ye did not just repeat a composition. Although certain poses are repeated to some extent, the composition is changed each time in his paintings from the second half of the 1890s, and it is only in 1900 that he succumbs to exact repetition, faithfully copying this composition, from the mid-summer of the year (ibid., p. 27, figs. 60 and 60a). Up to and including this painting, however, they are different.

Although the colouring of the horses, particularly on one side, brightens up the palette considerably, this is another of his standard blue-palette paintings of the late 1890s and the turn of the century. The setting, even if not the main subject, owes a lot to Zhou Leyuan again, although the willow trees here, with their larger scale and more precisely painted foliage, are an innovation by Ye. The typical Zhou Leyuan version is copied more faithfully on Sale 8, lot 1125.