Lot 1166
Treasury 4, no. 511 (‘Smooth and Fruitful Undertakings’)
HK$60,000

Glass, ink, and watercolours; with a concave lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded foot rim; painted on one main side with Zhong Kui 鍾馗 riding a donkey in the sky above swirling clouds, followed by a demon-attendant carrying a potted plant on his shoulders, inscribed in cursive script Yun cheng wanli 雲程萬里(‘A journey of 10,000 li among the clouds’), with one seal of the artist, yin (‘seal’), in negative seal script, the other main side with two herdboys riding their water buffaloes in shallow water and chatting, with a distant waterfall emerging from rolling hills on the far shore, with mountains beyond, inscribed in cursive script Bingshen zhongchun yue xie yu dumen, Ye Zhongsan zuo 丙申仲春月寫於都門，葉仲三作 (‘Painted at the capital in the Mid-spring month in the year bingshen; executed by Ye Zhongsan)’ with one seal of the artist, hua (‘painting’) in negative seal script
Ye Zhongsan, the Apricot Grove Studio, Chongwen district, Beijing, second lunar month, 1896
Height: 6.11 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.60/1.72 cm
Stopper: jadeite; vinyl collar

Provenance:
Jade House, Hong Kong (1985)

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 325
Treasury 4, no. 511

Exhibited:
Hong Kong Museum of Art, March–June 1994
National Museum, Singapore, November 1994–February 1995
Christie’s, London, 1999

The side with the two boys on water buffaloes here is an even balance between Ye’s growing confidence in his own subject matter and his debt to Zhou. Apart from the blue palette, Ye has also borrowed the distant hills with a river and waterfall, although he has included his own typical hillocks (discussed under Sale 4, lot 123). They are very similarly painted here, which is hardly surprising since the two works were made only a few months apart. The stylized hillocks under Ye’s brush begin to resemble the stomach-muscles of a body-builder. The degree of stylisation stems, partly, from Ye’s more pictorial attitude to his art. Zhou was an artist first and picture-maker second; he tended to reconsider such details every time and not slip into a habitual formula. Ye, for whom creating a saleable picture was more important than evolving personal artistic style, tended to stick with a formula for painting a particular subject once he had worked out the best way to do it. In front of these far hills which are, like Sale 4, lot 123, set as a distance and separated horizontally from the foreground by water and mist, are Ye’s evolved boys-on-water-buffaloes. Although the subject was borrowed from Zhou, this is undoubtedly a Ye Zhongsan version of it. The boys are considerably larger than on Zhou’s water buffaloes; in fact one feels a trifle sorry for the beast in the front, who has a lad half his size perched on his rump. This reflects Ye’s growing confidence with figure painting. Although still subdued and not of the frank and colourful opacity of the colours of the boys in Sale 5, lot 80 (in order to harmonize more with the distant mountains), the figures are still typical of Ye’s mature output: more emphatic, and a more important element in the composition.

On the other side is a subject Ye introduced at this time. It is the fabled demon-queller Zhong Kui on a donkey (see Sale 4, lot 79 for the legend of Zhong Kui). He is depicted here as riding through the air on nothing more than wisps of cloud. As always, he is attended by a demon-servant since, having quelled them one might as well put them to work. He carries a potted plant containing a blossoming shrub on his shoulders. Again the subject is more subdued in colouring than in Ye’s later versions, to match the rather Zhou-esque subject of the other side, but is otherwise pure Ye Zhongsan, who had by this time mastered the art of painting horses and donkeys.

The seals here are a departure from Ye’s usual huayin (‘painting seal’). By splitting this seal, which appears on most of his earlier works and was continued into the year 1900, he arrives at the seal yin on its own, which was to become his standard and which begins to appear more often from 1896 onwards.

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.