Falling for Magpies

Ye Zhongsan, Huashi, Beijing, 21 July 1903 (or 21 July – 10 August)
Height: 6.18 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.58/1.57 cm
Stopper: aquamarine

Provenance:
Bigelow Family Collection, USA
Robert Hall (1987)

 

Crystal, ink, and watercolours; with a concave lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding flattened foot rim; painted inside with a continuous scene of thirty magpies in the branches of a blossoming prunus tree, with a grassy convoluted rock formation below, on which some of the birds are perched, and the full moon above, inscribed Guimao xiafu wei Zixian qingwan Ye Zhongsan zuo 癸卯夏伏為子仙清玩, 葉仲三作 (‘Made on Summer Subsidence of the guimao year for the lofty enjoyment of Zixian’), followed by one seal of the artist, yin 印 (‘seal’) in negative regular script.

Alexander Whittaker