This bottle, extremely finely rendered with careful attention to shading and stippling to create a sense of three-dimensionality, is among the finest examples produced in the Palace workshops under the Qianlong reign. The bottle presumably dates to the early 1750's when the glass and enamel workshops were under direction of the Jesuits, and when both technical and artistic quality were at their apex. Few published 'European-subject' snuff bottles can compare in terms of quality and refinement, these would include a bottle in the J & J Collection, illustrated by H. Moss, V. Graham and K.B. Tsang, The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, New York, 1993, pl. 173; a bottle in the collection of Mary and George Bloch, Chinese Snuff Bottles, A Miniature Art Form, Hong Kong, 1994, no. 6; and several illustrated in Snuff Bottles, The Complete Collection of Treasures of the Palace Museum, Commercial Press, Hong Kong, 2003, nos. 164-167.

Unlike most European-subject enamels painted within panels produced by the Beijing workshops, the subjects depicted on the present bottle are not the typical idealised beauties, but portraits of a gentleman and his lady.