Featured Item
Snuff bottleYe Zhongsan (1875 - 1945)
China
Inside painted with jade stopper
This three inch tall clear glass bottle with oval footrim is inside-painted with scholars in a bamboo grove in conversation and enjoying a flute player; a young man stands to one side holding a beaker. Well-painted and with a short inscription and red seal. Painted with a continuous scene of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove".
Ye Zhongsan was at his best between about 1897 and 1905. Although he repeated subjects and compositions during this time, as he was to do so frequently under the Studio Years after 1912, some of the works from this early period are masterpieces in a class with those of Zhou Leyuan who influenced him.
Ye Zhongsan was a follower of Zhou Leyuan who showed great promise in his early years. He was at his peak between 1895 and 1908, producing a series of masterpieces in his own, evolved style, but finally succumbed to a latent commercial streak after 1912, when joined by the eldest of his three sons. As the sons gradually joined his workshop, all producing bottles under Ye Zhongsan's name, the studio became blatantly commercial, turning out skillful, but repetitive works, until his two surviving sons started the Modern Beijing School, in the mid-1950s.
The bottle is glass, polychrome, jade and was made ca 1900
Snuff bottle
Hurst Gallery, 53 Mount Auburn St. Cambridge, MA 02138 tel. 617.491.6888