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Lot Essay
Sun Xingwu began his career copying the work of Zhou Leyuan, which seems to have been practically de rigueur for artists in this field at this time. However, he very quickly established his own distinctive and highly competent style, which typically features a subdued use of color and a complete pictorial competence in painting the genre scenes he favored.
The present bottle is one of Sun's finer works, and luckily appears to have been less used and is unstained by snuff. A similar scene appears on another bottle from the J & J Collection, illustrated in The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, no. 443. Both bottles bear the same poetic inscription, obviously one favored by Sun, but here it is written in seal script rather than draft script. The present bottle also lacks the camels, with other figures being used in their place. Other bottles by Sun illustrating similar scenes include an undated example in the Hults Collection; an example dated to 1897 in the Shierson Collection and a third dated to 1899 is recorded by H. Moss, ibid., p. 723. An amusing feature of the present bottle is the curious placement of the moon below the mountain range, which, although analytically illogical, was necessitated by the fact that the inscription consumes all the space above the mountain range. Its placement is nonetheless formally effective, and the impression of a moonlit night shortly before the dawn is still well depicted.
The present bottle is one of Sun's finer works, and luckily appears to have been less used and is unstained by snuff. A similar scene appears on another bottle from the J & J Collection, illustrated in The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, no. 443. Both bottles bear the same poetic inscription, obviously one favored by Sun, but here it is written in seal script rather than draft script. The present bottle also lacks the camels, with other figures being used in their place. Other bottles by Sun illustrating similar scenes include an undated example in the Hults Collection; an example dated to 1897 in the Shierson Collection and a third dated to 1899 is recorded by H. Moss, ibid., p. 723. An amusing feature of the present bottle is the curious placement of the moon below the mountain range, which, although analytically illogical, was necessitated by the fact that the inscription consumes all the space above the mountain range. Its placement is nonetheless formally effective, and the impression of a moonlit night shortly before the dawn is still well depicted.