Bottle ID: 00245

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GUI XIANGGU, LANDSCAPE SCENE W/MAN ON A DONKEY

Date: 1897

Height: 63 mm

 

Glass, ink and watercolors, of flattened rectangular form resting with sloping shoulders, well painted on the inside in sepia tones of gray, orange and brown, on one side with a scholar and his young attendant in front of his retreat along the banks of the river at the base of a mountainous landscape with pavilions on the opposite riverbank; the reverse with a wintry scene with Huang Chenyen astride his donkey, his attendant following clutching a prunus branch, at the base of the misty mountains with a short inscription 'Third Month of Spring in the year dingyou.  Emulating the personal style of the Old Fellow of South Field, Done at the Capital, Gui Xianggu', with one seal (illegible).

 

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. 110.
Moss, Hugh, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang.  Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles - The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 4, Part 2, pp. 357-358, no. 573.

 

Provenance:

Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, November 3, 1994, lot 1043

 

Exhibited:
 

Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007

 

 

 

Gui Xianggu painted in Beijing between the years 1893-1901, using a color palette that was predominantly brown, purple, white and gray with shades of orange or russet.  There are sixty recorded works by him (although two of these have rather spurious signatures). Gui, as Zhou Leyuan and Ding Erzhong also did, states on this bottle that he is imitating the style of the painter Yun Shouping, whose art name was Nan Tian. Yun Shouping (1633-1690) is one of the "Six Masters" of the Qing Dynasty, specializing in bird and flower painting.  Yun also painted landscapes, employing the "boneless" technique, creating form without defining outline through the use of diluted ink and color washes.  The style of his landscapes, with finer detail in the foreground and more abstract mountains to the rear, is clearly imitated by Gui on this bottle.  Gui was versatile, other examples by him show that he could replicate different styles and painters such as Bada Shanren, although to varying degrees of success, and he never repeated his work without changing at least one element in the composition.  The similar example quoted above is nearer in style to this bottle, while a bottle from the Bloch Collection by Gui Xianggu (no. 573) illustrates a very similar subject matter, but in a different painting style. His calligraphy, unlike some of the other Middle School artists, was of a high standard and artistically uninhibited so that he could tackle inscriptions taken from the classics such as the Lanting Preface.

 

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