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photographer New Owner.

The Mary and George Bloch Collection: Part III  
Bonham's, Hong Kong, 25 May 2011: Lot 51 

Lot 51

Lot 51
Treasury 4, no. 598

An inside-painted glass ‘bear and eagle’ snuff bottle

(‘Hero Among the Pines’)

Glass, ink, and watercolours; with a concave lip and recessed, convex foot surrounded by a protruding, rounded footrim; painted on one main side with a bear walking between two mature pine trees in a rocky landscape and looking up at an eagle perched in the branches of one of the pines, the other main side inscribed in clerical and regular scripts with a composite poem preceded by a dedication, ‘For the pure enjoyment of Guozhang, an honourable elder brother,’ and followed by the signature, Ma Shaoxuan, with one seal of the artist, Shaoxuan, in negative seal script
Ma Shaoxuan or family, Studio for Listening to the Qin, Ox Street district, Beijing, 1905–1925
Height: 5.1 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.62/1.7 cm
Stopper: coral; silver collar

Lot 51 Provenance:
Sotheby’s London, 11 October 1974, lot 44
Robert Hall (1984)

Published:
JICSBS, Spring 1985, p. 121, lower left
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 339
Ma Zengshan 1997, p. 37, fig. 11 (reverse)
Treasury 4, no. 598

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
National Museum, Singapore, November 1994–February 1995

Lot 51 Commentary
This is a very rare subject for the Ma family. One other almost identical composition exists that appears to be of a very similar standard. An impressive work in the Susan Hacker Collection, it is the only recorded bottle signed by Ma Shangpu, obviously a relative and one we believe may have helped Ma with his output. Otherwise how did Shangpu acquire such talent in the art and why did he not apply it to a personal career? The Shangpu bottle is dated to 1922 and may represent the rare occasion on which a family member other than Shaoxian created a masterpiece under his own name for whatever reason. Although the calligraphy is better on this example, it is still not up to Ma Shaoxuan’s finest work, and it is possible that Shangpu painted both bottles.

With its rare subject and superb painting (which, in this case, would survive isolation from the bottle format and assessment as a painting), this is one of the Ma-family masterpieces, made the more delightful by its studio condition, despite a backing of pale beige-coloured snuff that gives it the appearance of a painting on ancient silk.

The lines of the poem are read right to left across the top register and then right to left across the bottom register:

Viewing blossoms is not prohibited,
[When,] with a touch of the hand, springtime occurs,
[And] the breath of life extends to a great distance,
[And] brings gliding orioles as close neighbours.

[Like] a rustic cottage in a luxuriant grove,
[Or] the essence of flowers and foliage,
[If one] discards [the notion of] outward resemblance,
The bright moon [could well have been these] in its former lives.

These lines are not originally from an integral poem but were taken from eight different poems and patched together to form a new one. The practice of assembling poems in this way, either from the works of one author or even of different authors, is called jiju (‘collecting lines’) and is said to have begun with the famous statesman, poet, and literatus Wang Anshi (1021–1086). The lines assembled here are taken from eight different poems in the series Ershisi shipin (‘Twenty-four Categories of Poetry’) by Sikong Tu (837–908): line 1 is poem 12, line 1; line 2 is poem 10, line 4; line 3 is poem 13, line 9; line 4 is poem 3, line 8; line 5 is poem 4, line 1; line 6 is poem 20, line 6; line 7 is poem 2, line 11; and line 8 is poem 7, line 12.




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