Gan Xuanwen, who used a variety of names, including Gan Huan and Jiren, is regarded as the inventor of the art of painting inside bottles according to Robert Kleiner in the exhibition Catalogue, Chinese Snuff Bottles, A Miniature Art from the Collection of Mary and George Bloch, Hong Kong, 1994, p. 356. Gan was an established artist and literatus who lived and worked in the Lingnan area of Guangdong province. What knowledge we have of him is due to the survival of a single handscroll in the collection of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which has been dated to between 1807 and 1814. See Hugh Moss, International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, Journal, Spring, 1991. The earliest known dated bottle by Gan is dated to the fourth month of 1815 and is in the Princeton University Museum

The calligraphy on the present example refers to the bottle, and the signature is followed by two indistinct colophons, possibly merely decorative. It is suggested by Kleiner, op. cit., p. 359, that the use of Gugang, which precedes the signature on the present example, was a place name. It might also be another art name