Immortals in a Garden

Bottle: 1750-1880
Painting: Ye Zhongsan, Huashi, Beijing, Third Month 1919 
Height: 7.38 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.57/1.69 cm
Stopper: jadeite; gilt-silver collar fringed with seed pearls

Provenance:
Mary Kaufman
Robert Kleiner, March 2013
Hugh Moss (HK ) Ltd.

Published:
Hugh Moss and Stuart Sargent, The Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection of Snuff Bottles. Part Two, Non-Imperial Influence over the Snuff Bottle Arts.

 

Crystal suffused with icy flaws, ink, and watercolours; with a flat lip and recessed foot surrounded by a protruding flat foot rim; painted on the inside with two scenes from the Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋志異, one showing Fu Lian 傳廉 in a tree looking down upon Qiaoniang 巧孃 and her two maids, inscribed in clerical script with the story’s title, Qiaoniang, the other showing a man addressing an elderly woman and a younger woman in a landscape setting, inscribed in clerical script with the title Yuncui xian 雲翠仙, followed in running script by Renyin meiyue xie yu jingshi, Ye Zhongsan 壬寅梅月寫於都門葉仲三 (‘Drawn at the capital by Ye Zhongsan in the plum-blossom month of the renyin year’) with one seal of the artist, yin 印 (seal)

Alexander Whittaker