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拍品專文
This bottle is one of a pair in the J & J Collection, and part of the famous set of eight bottles discussed by H. Moss et al. in The Art of the Chinese Snuff Bottle, The J & J Collection, vol. I, New York, 1993, p. 366, no. 212. When the set appeared in Hong Kong in the 1970s, it was split up into pairs and sold to four prominent collectors. Apart from the two in the J & J Collection which came from the Arthur Gadsby Collection, the other three sets were dispersed as follows: two were in the Bloch Collection (originally acquired by Galia Baylin and then via the Belfort Collection), illustrated in Moss, Graham, Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, vol. 6, Part 2, Hong Kong, 2008, pp. 546-549, nos. 1245 and 1246): two were in the Meriem Collection (one sold at Christie’s New York, 19 September 2007, lot 706; and two in the Stemple Collection (sold at Sotheby’s PB84 New York, 11 October 1979, lot 63).
These eight bottles are amongst the finest and most exquisitely enameled of all Jiaqing imperial porcelain snuff bottles, painted in bright enamels and of extremely elegant form. Boxed sets of snuff bottles were ordered at Jingdezhen in the late Qianlong and early Jiaqing periods, and were sent to the court in sets of varying numbers for use as gifts. For examples of Jiaqing-marked, famille-rose sets see Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Musuem, Taipei, 1991, pp. 119-131, nos. 83-95. The set from which the present example belonged appears to be unique in that the shapes, border patterns and marks are identical, but each has a different subject.
The present bottle depicts a continuous landscape scene in which an elderly scholar riding a mule is accompanied by an attendant carrying a prunus branch, with a further attendant on the other side. This imagery suggests that the subject may be the Tang-dynasty scholar, poet and recluse, Meng Haoren, who was reputed to have admired prunus blossoms.
These eight bottles are amongst the finest and most exquisitely enameled of all Jiaqing imperial porcelain snuff bottles, painted in bright enamels and of extremely elegant form. Boxed sets of snuff bottles were ordered at Jingdezhen in the late Qianlong and early Jiaqing periods, and were sent to the court in sets of varying numbers for use as gifts. For examples of Jiaqing-marked, famille-rose sets see Snuff Bottles in the Collection of the National Palace Musuem, Taipei, 1991, pp. 119-131, nos. 83-95. The set from which the present example belonged appears to be unique in that the shapes, border patterns and marks are identical, but each has a different subject.
The present bottle depicts a continuous landscape scene in which an elderly scholar riding a mule is accompanied by an attendant carrying a prunus branch, with a further attendant on the other side. This imagery suggests that the subject may be the Tang-dynasty scholar, poet and recluse, Meng Haoren, who was reputed to have admired prunus blossoms.