Lot 91

Lot 91
Treasury 4, no. 486
HK$264,000

Searching for Prunus Blossoms in the Snow

Glass, ink, and watercolours; with a slightly concave lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding convex footrim; painted on one main side with a herdboy, seated playing a flute on the back of his water buffalo, wading home between reed banks in a river, beneath two willow trees on the near bank, with hills beyond, inscribed in draft script with a poem followed by one seal of the artist, yuan yin (seal of yuan), in negative seal script, the other main side with a winter landscape scene of a river running between mountainous peaks towards a foreground stone bridge with blossoming prunus trees, with a scholar on a donkey crossing the bridge followed by his attendant carrying a branch of flowering prunus, inscribed in draft script ‘Executed in the eighth month of the year gengyin at the capital by Zhou Leyuan,’ followed by one seal of the artist, le, in negative seal script
Zhou Leyuan, Studio of Lotus-root Fragrance, Xuannan, Beijing, eighth month, 1890
Height: 6.62 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.55 /1.59 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; vinyl collar

Illustration: watercolour by Malcolm Golding, 1971

Lot 91 Provenance:
Hugh M. Moss Ltd. (circa 1964)
Lady Cain (circa 1973)
Hugh M. Moss Ltd. (circa 1973)
Irving Lindzon
Christie’s, London, 12 October 1987, lot 321

Published:
Kleiner, Yang, and Shangraw 1994, no. 317
Treasury 4, no. 486

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

Lot 91 Commentary
This is one of Zhou Leyuan’s great masterpieces from the later period. It is also in studio condition and may never have been used. One can understand why a late Qing aesthete would hesitate to put snuff against such a delicate and lovely painting. One gets the impression that the artist pulled out all the artistic stops on this one and went for gold.

Here Zhou combines two rare compositions, the boy on the water buffalo and a figure on a donkey searching for prunus blossoms in the snow. While the first subject is a standard, if occasional one for his later years (see discussion under Treasury 4, no. 480), his painting of it is unparalleled in its compositional power, masterful technique and subtle use of ink and colours. The other side is a much rarer image, seen only very occasionally in his later years. The balance of the strongly painted and quite brightly coloured foreground with the snowy valley winding upwards away from the viewer and painted only in pale shades of ink is a masterpiece, and the subtlety of the distant, snow-covered mountains from which the chill stream emerges, quite breathtaking. There may be other Zhou Leyuan paintings as fine, but there is nothing better or more compelling in conveying the images he has chosen and the mood they are intended to invoke.

The poem inscribed on the side with the boy on his water buffalo is ‘A Village at Dusk’ written by Lei Zhen of the Northern Song period, quoted and discussed under Treasury 4, no. 480. It reads:

The pond is overgrown with grass, the water reaching up to the slopes.
The hills [are about to] swallow the setting sun as it dips into the chilly ripples.
As the herdboy returns home riding sideways on his water buffalo,
He randomly plays a small flute, letting out strings of notes that do not seem to make up any particular melody.

On the other side the figure on the donkey is probably a generalized representation rather than any specific person, although see the various possible individuals proposed in Ka Bo Tsang 1994.