Lot 109

Lot 109
Treasury 4, no. 666
HK$180,000

Wang Xisan’s Masterly Threat to the Art

Yellow glass, ink, and watercolours; with a flat lip and protruding flat foot with a groove carved around it to separate out a footrim; painted with a continuous garden scene with a cypress tree and a convoluted rock formation in which are set two dogs copied from paintings by Giuseppe Castiglione, one standing, scratching its ear, with a seal, dongwu (animal), above in negative seal script, the other seated, inscribed in regular script, ‘Executed in imitation of the painting ideas of Lang Shining during the last month of the summer in the year jiyou at Yihu zhai (One Bottle Studio)’, with one seal of the artist, Xisan, in negative seal script
Bottle: 1770–1850
Painting: Wang Xisan, One Bottle Studio, Hengshui, Hebei province, 1969
Height: 6.27 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.65/1.90 cm
Stopper: carnelian; glass collar

Illustration: watercolour by Peter Suart

Lot 109 Provenance:
C. F. Turner
Sotheby’s, London, 23 October 1970, lot 239 (bought Stanton)
Sotheby’s, London, 6 May 1986, lot 285

Published:
Kleiner 1987, no. 310
Illustrated London News, Summer 1990, p. 49
Orient Express Magazine, Summer 1990, p. 49
Prestige, Summer 1990, p. 49
Galeries Lafayette 1990, p. 11, no. 2
Arts of Asia, September-October 1990, p. 98
Kleine Schätze aus China, p. 10
Kleiner 1994, p. 42, Pl. 24, lower right
Kleiner 1995, no. 433
Chinese Snuff Bottles in the Collection of Mary and George Bloch (illustrated folder) Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July 1997
Treasury 4, no. 666

Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Galeries Lafayette, Paris, April 1990
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993
British Museum, London, June–November 1995
Israel Museum, Jerusalem, July–November 1997
Christie’s, London, 1999

Lot 109 Commentary
This lovely painting has always been considered to be one of Wang Xisan’s masterpieces, and it is superbly painted, of that there is no question. Inherent in it, however, is one of the most serious threats to the art form which was to manifest itself in later years in the works of Wang’s students. As an inventive artist, Wang Xisan sought inspiration from any source, and was often moved to paint after the style or even after an individual painting by earlier painters. The superb Treasury 4, no. 662 is such a bottle, as is this. These two depictions of dogs are copied from two hanging scrolls which belong to a set of ten entitled Shijun tu (Ten Splendid Dogs) now in the collection of the National Palace Museum in Taipei, the ‘golden-winged hound>’ (e-card) and the ‘mottled brocade tiger cub>’ (e-card). He has copied the two dogs exactly. But by blending the two into a single work of art and altering the setting, Wang has borrowed from Castiglione while painting his own work of art, as he always had. But the idea of copying from existing paintings opened up the floodgates for his many students. To shift artistic intent from creating a work of art to copying it, is to walk on thin ice aesthetically, particularly in a medium where one is never on too solid a footing in any case because of the inherent risk of trivialization contained in the medium itself. From that point onwards, particularly among students without Wang’s long-standing sense of his own artistic tradition, there is a tendency to look for images to put inside a bottle, rather than to use the inside of a bottle as a place to create individual works of art. The moment that happens, you can say goodbye to the art as it slips back into the commercial banality from which Wang Xisan had single-handedly saved it during his golden years.

Lang Shining was the Chinese name of Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–1766), a Jesuit painter from Milan who served the Chinese court in the eighteenth century, painting an extraordinary series of masterpieces in one of the most successful fusions of Western and Chinese style ever achieved. According to the inscription on the original painting, the name given to the dog scratching its ear was Jinchi xian (Dog with Gilded Wings). This prized dog was offered as a tribute item to the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736–1795) by Danborincin, a fourth-rank taisha from the Khorchins, one of the Mongolian tribes that had moved into Manchuria at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Its Manchu name means ‘Tibetan dog’ (see Zhuang Jifa 1992, p. 145). The other beast, seated looking back over its shoulder, was called Banjin biao (Tiger-cat [Wearing] Striped Brocade). It was offered to the Qianlong emperor by Fu Heng (d. 1769), a Grand Secretary and a Duke of the First Rank with the Designation Zhongyong (Faithful and Courageous). In 1760 his second son, Fulong’an (1743 or 1746–1784) had the honour of marrying Princess Hejia, the fourth daughter of the Qianlong emperor.