Lot 1009
  • 1009

An Inside-Painted Glass ‘Auspicious Objects’ Snuff Bottle Zhou Leyuan, circa 1890

Estimate
60,000 - 80,000 HKD
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Description

Provenance

Emily Byrne Curtis.
Robert Kleiner, London, 1986.

Literature

Moss et al., 1996-2009, vol. 4, no. 487.

Condition

Bottle: Small nibbles to the inner lip. Surface scratches and abrasions from use. Painting: Studio condition.
"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."

Catalogue Note

This bottle is dated with some certainty to 1890 and is a work not far removed in time from Sale 1, lot 91. The landscape is unusual insofar as Zhou’s standard image of a fisherman in a boat is enhanced by the addition of the walls of a fortified city. It has the same extraordinary technical control combined with very subtle shading; it has the signature style, Leyuan Zhou shi, which appears most often in 1890 (particularly in the summer months); and has very similar calligraphy, on a slightly smaller scale than usual to balance the subtlety of the washes. It seems to represent, as did Sale 1, lot 91, a period in his life when he was inspired to excel even his own consistently high standards.

Although the subject on the other side is a standard one, it is again an unusual composition painted with extraordinary delicacy and subtlety. The teapot is of a standard Yixing pottery shape and could hardly be read as anything but an Yixing teapot although, instead of being coloured in the standard colour for this ware, it is washed only in a very light, beautifully modulated wash of grey ink. There is so slight a hint of blue in the jardinière with the prunus that it is barely visible, and the apparently ceramic fangding 方鼎 with calamus grass is simply painted with lines and no washes at all. The rock itself is unusual in that it divides into two distinct halves joined only at the top by the most tenuous of links across its centre.

It is another masterpiece where an enlargement of the painting, divorced from the confines of the bottle form, could speak for itself. To enlarge the painting and exclude the bottle is always an interesting exercise with inside-painted bottles. It reveals immediately which should be taken seriously as painting and which are just decorative. None of the more decorative commercial and repetitive works by the artists who followed Zhou Leyuan survive the process as serious art. Isolate Zhou’s paintings from the bottles and imagine his work as a series of album leaves from the late nineteenth century, however, and they can stand with the best. There are very few artists for whom this claim can be made across the entirety of their works, and only a few more for whom it is occasionally true of their finest works.

This bottle is dedicated to someone who used the name Yaodong; meaning something like ‘make the East shine in glory’, Yaodong was a fairly common name from the late Qing on, but most people who used it were too young for this bottle. There is one individual who was old enough to be a possible match for the dedication, however: Shi Rong 世榮 (1860 – 1929). A Mongol from the Shenyang area, he became a provincial graduate in 1893 and a jinshi in 1895. His courtesy name (zi) was Renfu 仁甫 and Yaodong was his sobriquet (hao). His highest office under the Qing was academician expositor-in-waiting; after the 1911 revolution, he returned to the Northeast to be an educator and scholar of some note.