Lot 211
Treasury 4, no. 609 (‘Portrait of a Manchu Official’)
HK$562,500

Flawless crystal, ink, and vermilion watercolour; with a flat lip and a recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding flattened footrim; painted on one main side with a portrait of an unidentified Manchu official, the other main side inscribed in regular script with an rhymed encomium describing the sitter, preceded by ‘For the approval of Xiechen, an honourable elder acquaintance,’ and followed by the signature ‘[Inscribed by] Ma Guangjia, [alias] the humble Shaoxuan,’ with one seal of the artist, Shaoxuan, in negative seal script
Bottle: 1760–1909
Painting: Ma Shaoxuan, Studio for Listening to the Qin, Ox Street district, Beijing, 1899–1909
Height: 6.2 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.52/1.88 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Edmund F. Dwyer
Hugh Moss (1985)

Published:
Snuff Bottles of the Ch’ing Dynasty 1978, no. 235
Reflected Glory, p. 95, fig. 132
JICSBS, June 1981, p. 37, fig. 14
JICSBS, Summer 1986, back cover
Kleiner 1987, no. 294
Kleiner 1995, no. 418
Treasury 4, no. 609

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, October– December 1978
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993
British Museum, London, June–November 1995
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July–November 1997
Christie's, London, 1999

Emily Byrne Curtis suggests that, judging from a photograph published by American engineer William B. Parsons in his An American Engineer in China, the person whose likeness appears on this bottle might be the military commander of Changsha, Liu Gaozhao (Reflected Glory, p. 95), and we agree; the photo, on p. 146 of Parsons’ book (available on the web), is a frontal view showing the same arched eyebrows, broad nose, and prominent cheeks. Curtis was prudently tentative in her suggested identification, but although we have not been able to locate another photograph of Liu, let alone the one used by Mao Shaoxuan for this bottle, we do think Parsons’ General Liu bears a definite resemblance to the person on this snuff bottle. Parsons would have taken the picture between late December 1898 and early 1899, when he was in Hunan surveying the line for a railway that would run from Guangzhou through Changsha to Hankou. (See also Tom Malcom, William Barclay Parsons: A Renaissance Man of Old New York, 2010.)

Several people are known to have used Xiechen as a courtesy name; two of them were important officials of the time. One of these was the subject of another inside-painted portrait by Ma Shaoxuan, Sun Jia’nai (1827–1909; (Reflected Glory, pp. 22 – 23; Hummel 1943, 673 – 675). It is difficult to imagine how Liu Gaozhao and Sun Jia’nai would have known each other, even if Liu came to Beijing, but we must admit that we don’t know anything at all about Liu after early 1899.

The other official who used the name Xiechen, Wu Shumei, is more likely to have had an opportunity to meet Liu Gaozhao. Wu was left vice minister of the Ministry of Revenue when he was sent to Hunan in the eighth month of 1898 by Cixi, the infamous Empress Dowager, as a provincial education commissioner for Hunan. It may seem suspicious for such a high official to be sent out as an educational commissioner, and indeed Zheng Xiaoxu (1860 – 1938) opined in his diary (Beijing: Xinhua shudian, 1993, vol. 2, p. 686) that Wu’s mission in Hunan was actually to sniff out trouble there: Hunan had been a starting point for the movement known as the Hundred Days’ Reform, which was halted by Cixi on the sixth day of the eighth month (21 September 1898, about the time Wu Shumei was sent to Hunan). If Liu Zhaogao is the person portrayed on the bottle, he and Wu could have become acquainted when Wu’s mission took him to Changsha. Moreover, given the atmosphere of the times (the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform led to the execution of six of the leaders, and the new governor of Hunan was opposed to reform and modernisation, as Parsons would discover a few months later), one could imagine that Liu might well have commissioned this snuff bottle as a present for Wu Shumei, just to remind him that he and his forces were loyal to the conservative cause. Perhaps Liu was in Beijing before Wu retired on account of illness at the beginning of 1902, but even after that point he may have hoped that Wu would be able to protect those whom he wanted to protect.

The inscription is in four-syllable lines, with rhyme at the end of the even-numbered lines:

Endowed with the talent to manage the affairs of the world,
He has the style of ‘light furs and broad belts’.
He is magnanimous of will,
And calm of spirit.
He makes friends in accord with the Way;
He is prudent and dignified,
Venerable of appearance, venerable of mind,
A brilliant man, this gentleman.

Light furs and broad belts were the mark of the high official or Very Important Person.

One would expect the inscription, the portrait, and the dedication all to apply to the same person, but if the portrait is of General Liu Gaozhao and the dedication is to someone named Xiechen, no matter whether that is Sun Jia'nai or Wu Shumei, we are left with some uncertainty as to whom the inscription applies.

This is not the Sotheby’s sale catalogue. This is a product of Hugh Moss for the purposes of this website. For the catalogue details please refer to Sotheby’s website or request a copy of a printed sale catalogue from Sotheby’s.