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Lot Essay
Wang Xisan trained under Ye Bengqi, son of Ye Zhongsan, and began by using similar techniques, including the basic method of preparing a bottle for painting by shaking ball-bearings mixed with corundum powder and water in order to evenly abrade the interior and give the colors purchase. The painting would then have been done with bamboo pens, bent sharply at the end, the traditional tool for this art established in Beijing around 1800 and subsequently passed on through Zhou Leyuan, the Ye family and finally to Wang. The tiny brush hairs tied to the end of the bamboo pens were a development of the post-1960s Shandong school, adopted by Wang Xisan and his students thereafter.
This bottle was commissioned for the J & J Collection, and completed in early 1982.
The subject of eight horses is an immediate reference to the steeds of Mu Wang, the fifth king of the Zhou dynasty. With these eight horses, the king was driven the length and breadth of his kingdom. However, the painting is in fact copied from a famous handscroll by Castiglione, entitled One Hundred Horses. Each of the two groups of horses is copied from a different section of the handscroll and placed within Wang's own composition.
Wang would have been familiar with Castiglione's work, for not only was the Jesuit a celebrated artist through the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns, but he also influenced the enameling workshops by providing designs and defining levels of technical and artistic competence. Since Wang also learned the art of enameling on glass from Ye Bengqi, whose own works of art closely followed the eighteenth-century Palace designs and enameling techniques, it is not surprising that Wang frequently turned to Castiglione's works as a source of inspiration.
This bottle was commissioned for the J & J Collection, and completed in early 1982.
The subject of eight horses is an immediate reference to the steeds of Mu Wang, the fifth king of the Zhou dynasty. With these eight horses, the king was driven the length and breadth of his kingdom. However, the painting is in fact copied from a famous handscroll by Castiglione, entitled One Hundred Horses. Each of the two groups of horses is copied from a different section of the handscroll and placed within Wang's own composition.
Wang would have been familiar with Castiglione's work, for not only was the Jesuit a celebrated artist through the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns, but he also influenced the enameling workshops by providing designs and defining levels of technical and artistic competence. Since Wang also learned the art of enameling on glass from Ye Bengqi, whose own works of art closely followed the eighteenth-century Palace designs and enameling techniques, it is not surprising that Wang frequently turned to Castiglione's works as a source of inspiration.