I.65
Centred and Harmonious

Famille rose enamels on translucent glass; with a flat lip and flat foot; painted with a continuous scene of four geese, one returning to a grassy shore to join the others, inscribed in regular script with a couplet about the geese, preceded by an oval seal, Zhonghe 中和 (‘Centeredness and harmony’), in positive seal script and followed by two square seals, the name Wu Yuchuan 吳玉川 in negative seal script, and Shangao 山高 (‘Tall as the mountains’) in positive regular script; the foot inscribed in regular script Da Qing nian zhi 大清年製 (‘Made in the Great Qing’)
Wu Yuchuan, palace workshops, Beijing, 1770-1799
Height: 8.45 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.71/1.29 cm
Stopper: stained quartz; gilt-bronze collar

Provenance:
Bonhams & Butterfields, San Francisco, 2007
Robert Hall, July 2007

The couplet is of unknown authorship. It reads 秋滿江湖同飲啄，風喧蘆葦自飛鳴 (‘Autumn fills the rivers and lakes; together they drink and peck. / A wind makes noise in the reeds and grasses; each takes to the air and cries’). The only other known bottle by Wu Yuchuan of this subject is in the J&J Collection (Hugh Moss, Vincent Graham, and Ka Bo Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle: The J&J Collection [New York: Weatherhill, 1993], no. 195).