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Bottle ID: 00398
CHEN ZHONGSAN, BOY RIDING A WATER BUFFALO W/INSCRIPTION
Date: circa 1907-1919
Height: 63 mm
Glass, ink and watercolors, of squared form with rounded shoulders, painted on the inside with a herd boy playing his flute and riding his water-buffalo beside a pine tree, through a rocky gorge, with an inscription 'For the Elegant Judgment of the Second Elder Brother Yixiu' and signed 'Made by Chen Zhongsan' with one illegible seal; the reverse with a boy perched on a pine tree amongst rockwork, looking down on an ascetic figure resting by a waterfall.
Similar Examples:
Hui, Humphrey K. F., Lai Suk Yee and Peter Y. K. Lam. Inkplay in Microcosm - Inside-painted Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Humphrey K. F. Hui Collection, 2002, no. 147.
Provenance:
Robert Kleiner Ltd.
Exhibited:
Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007
Published:
Robert Kleiner & Co. Ltd. 1999, no. 83
Chen Zhongsan was another late arrival to the Beijing School as his dated works range from 1907 until 1919. There are approximately sixty works by him of which three-quarters are dated. Despite the influence of Zhou Leyuan and Ma Shaoxuan, Chen retained his own distinctive style in portraying subjects painted by these established artists. His work is renowned for the filling in of endless detail, while maintaining integrity in his composition. A number of the glass bottles he used were 'squarer' than the usual rectangular Beijing School blanks, giving Chen more surface to work on.
The herd boy on the buffalo is a fairly common subject on inside painted bottles and is taken from a poem entitled 'A Village at Dusk', written by Lei Zhen in the Northern Song Period, which reads:
'As the herd boy returns home, riding sideways, on his water buffalo.
He randomly plays a small flute...'
As with this bottle, Chen's inscriptions tend to be short, giving out little information other than his signature, a date and as on this occasion, a dedication. The person to whom this bottle is dedicated, Yixiu, cannot be identified and there is no information at all to identify the younger brother who commissioned the bottle from Chen.