Lot 57

Lot 57
Treasury 4, no. 665
HK$288,000

Pinnacle of Perfection

Crystal, ink, and watercolours; with a flat lip and recessed, very slightly convex foot surrounded by a protruding flat footrim; painted with a continuous composition of one hundred boys playing in a garden with a willow tree and a convoluted rock formation, inscribed in clerical script with the title ‘One Hundred Boys’, followed in draft script by ‘[The subject of] one hundred boys depicted in inside-painted [bottles] is as rarely seen as the feather of a fenghuang or the horn of a qilin. I have laboured for twenty-one days to complete this. [For me], this ought to be the best work in my career’, with one seal of the artist, Xisan, in negative seal script
Bottle: 1770–1880
Painting: Wang Xisan, Yang village, Hebei province, 1968
Height: 6.85 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.9/2.85 cm
Stopper: tourmaline; jadeite collar

Lot 57 Provenance:
Hong Kong dealer (circa 1969)
Ann Cohen (circa 1977)
Hugh Moss (1985)

Published:
Arts of Asia, July–August 1972, p. 16
Jutheau 1980, p. 73
JICSBS, Summer 1984, p. 21 fig. 1
JICSBS, Spring 1986, p. 7, no. 8
Kleiner 1987, no. 309
Arts of Asia, September–October 1990, p. 98
Treasury 4, no. 665

Exhibited:
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993
Christie’s, London, 1995

Lot 57 Commentary
Wang wrote of this bottle (JICSBS, Summer 1984, p. 21):

My two masters, Ye Xiaofeng and Ye Bengqi, once told me that Ye Zhongsan had painted a bottle, ‘One Hundred Boys Playing.’ I wanted to paint another one, but this long-cherished wish could not come true because of the fetters of the administration system at that time. When I was sent back to my ancestral home in Hebei Province ... I had the conditions to achieve my wish. Near my studio there was a primary school. My determination to create was aroused by those innocent and artless students. I carefully watched the ：children’s psychology and activities every day and accumulated many sketches of playing children. After I completed the manuscript, I worked hard for twenty-one days, carrying the painting through without stopping. It was very pleasant to have my long-cherished wish come true.

On the strength of this one bottle, the subject of children playing became, again, a standard subject. Wang himself painted one hundred children at least two more times, and many other bottles of smaller numbers of children, and many of his students took up the same subject. The few playing children of 1896, when Ye Zhongsan first painted the subject, probably influenced by Zhou Leyuan’s subject of naughty children in a schoolroom (see Treasury 4, no. 471), grew under his own hand to the full hundred (or, in the case of the one in the Bloch Collection, ninety-nine — see Treasury 4, no. 648). It was the three or more bottles Ye did of the full complement of children that inspired Wang, however, and led to this masterpiece. There is no indication that Wang actually saw one of Ye’s paintings of the subject, however, although presumably he must have seen some of his paintings of fewer children, since they are common enough.

There are many accounts of the circumstances under which this bottle was painted. ‘The Caged Eagle’, a ‘reportage-literature’ story by Li Lingxiu reprinted in a number of collections of that post-Mao literary movement, says that before the side-industry system was officially restored to villages, Wang Xisan got an export company in Tianjin to sell his bottles, but did not reveal his identity. However, a buyer from Hong Kong supposedly spied the name ‘One-bottle Studio' on a bottle and recognized it as the work of Wang Xisan of Beijing. This contradicts Hua Fusheng 2008, p. 761, which records that Wang did not use this studio name until 1968, after several side industries had already been started up in Yang Village. And according to the short biography of Wang by Zhu Jianming published in JICSBS, Summer 1984, 16–27, One-Bottle Studio was adopted in 1972; Wang later had Zhu make a correction: In 1969, he was given a fan with ‘One Bottle Master’ inscribed on it, and it was after that that he sometimes used the signature ‘One-Bottle Studio’, as well as ‘Half-Peasant Studio’ (see JICSBS, Summer 1985, 28–29). In 1973, after he moved to Fucheng (Hua Fusheng says that in 1974 the ‘whole family’ moved, so perhaps he moved first in 1973), he began to formally use ‘One-Bottle Studio’ to designate his studio. Now, the allusion behind the name—a proverbial saying to the effect that when the boat overturns in midstream, one humble bottle, that is, one gourd-jug tied around the waist for flotation, is worth a thousand in gold—makes it seem that it was a perfect expression for that time when the village was starving and snuff bottles made by Wang and apprentices, if he could train any locals to help him, could have been the 'single gourd' that could save them. But that is not to say the name would not have been meaningful even in the following decade or so. The only scenario that really does not stand up to scrutiny is Li Lingxiu's literary recreation.