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Lot Essay
For an inside-painted glass bottle by Wang Xisan painted with a similar portrait of Zhang Heng (78-139) (figure in the blue robe), see Chiu Zhiguo, Masterpieces from the Great Masters of Inside-Painted Snuff Bottles, Hong Kong, 2013, p. 18, no. 9, where it is noted that Zhang was "a great astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, writer and scholar of the Eastern Han Dynasty."
The smiling figure in the white robe can be identified by the inscription as Zu Chongzhi (429-500), a mathematician and astronomer of the Liu Song and Southern Qi Dynasties.
For a discussion on the artist Wang Xisan see H. Moss, V. Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, The J & J Collection, Tokyo, 1993, p. 731, no. 449. Born in 1938, Wang Xisan (Wang Ruicheng) was the star pupil of Ye Bengqi and Ye Xiaofeng, who were the sons of Ye Zhongsan, the artist who revitalized the Beijing school of painting in the late 1950s.
The smiling figure in the white robe can be identified by the inscription as Zu Chongzhi (429-500), a mathematician and astronomer of the Liu Song and Southern Qi Dynasties.
For a discussion on the artist Wang Xisan see H. Moss, V. Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, The J & J Collection, Tokyo, 1993, p. 731, no. 449. Born in 1938, Wang Xisan (Wang Ruicheng) was the star pupil of Ye Bengqi and Ye Xiaofeng, who were the sons of Ye Zhongsan, the artist who revitalized the Beijing school of painting in the late 1950s.