Lot 121

Lot 121
Treasury 4, no. 488

An inside-painted glass ‘goldfish’ snuff bottle

(‘An Abundance of Gold and Jade’)

Glass, ink, and watercolours; with a slightly concave lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding, rounded footrim; painted on one main side with an open pavilion set beneath two mature pine trees, in a valley surrounded by mountains with streams, waterfalls, and drifting clouds, the other main side with nine fan-tailed goldfish, four in the foreground and five smaller ones in the distance, in a pond with aquatic plants, inscribed in draft script ‘Executed at the capital by Zhou Leyuan on the day when winter began in the year gengyin,’ followed by one seal of the artist, yuan yin (‘seal of yuan’), in negative seal script
Zhou Leyuan, The Studio of Lotus-root Fragrance, Xuannan, Beijing, early winter, 1890
Height: 6.21 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.65/1.5 cm
Stopper: coral, with integral finial and collar; additional glass collar

Lot 121 Provenance:
Hugh Moss (prior to 1974)
Robert Hall (1990)
Hugh M. Moss Ltd. (1992)

Published:
Hall 1990, no. 36
Kleiner 1995, no. 383
Treasury 4, no. 488

Exhibited:
British Museum, London, June–November 1995
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July–November 1997
Christie’s, London, 1999

Lot 121 Commentary
This is one of Zhou’s classic landscapes from 1890, which are discussed more fully under Treasury 4, no. 489. Here there are three main focal points of the painting: the pines, the empty pavilion, and the far torrents running down through the mountain gorge. Instead of his usual distant peaks, Zhou has shrouded the upper area of the picture in drifting cloud-banks, leaving the imagination to decide just how far upwards the mountainous gorge might continue.

On the other side, the goldfish swimming in a pond represent wealth. The goldfish (jinyu) and the pond (tang) supply the key words to evoke the auspicious phrase, jinyu mantang, which means, ‘[May your] hall be filled with gold and jade,’ in other words, may you be wealthy. For this reason, these goldfish, whether actually golden in colour or not, became a popular staple of the art form throughout the period of the mainly commercial Beijing School of Zhou Leyuan.

In his later years, with Zhou’s growing confidence and market, his seals become standardized to a greater extent. The positive seal-script seals of his early years, of varying sizes, some of which are quite large and prominent, give way to a series of smaller versions in negative seal script. The text of the seals is mainly drawn from various combinations of the three characters of his name together with the character yin (‘seal’), but the larger size seals, the variety of his earlier years, and positive seal script all disappear. It might be nothing more than a question of practice, since it is easier to paint the characters as positive images in a seal; it takes more confidence to paint around them, leaving the white space as the character. Zhou’s signatures, seals, and studio names are discussed under Treasury 4, no. 505