An inside-painted glass Snuff Bottle
Ye Zhongsan, 1898
Of rounded square shape and painted in a continuous scene with the eight horses of Muwang strolling in a river or lakeside setting with willow to one side, the eighth horse of the group highly unusually depicted rolling on its side to the underside of the bottle and only visible from the foot, signed by the artist and dated wuwu.
2 1/2in (6.3cm) high, stopper
Footnotes:
1898年 葉仲三 玻璃內畫八駿圖鼻煙壺

Provenance:
Frank Caro, October 1990

According to Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 4, Part I, Inside Painted, pp.231-232, no. 521, where the authors illustrate a bottle with the same subject dated to 1900, Ye Zhongsan painted the subject of the 'Eight Horses of Mu Wang' for the first time in 1896. Another dated 1907 is illustrated by Michael C. Hughes, The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Chinese Snuff Bottles, Baltimore, 2009, pp. 262-263, no. 204.

Another bottle dated to 1930, is illustrated by Humphrey K.F. Hui, Lai Suk Yee and Peter Y.K. Lam, Inkplay in Microcosm, Inside-painted Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Humphrey K.F. Hui Collection, Art Museum, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2002, no. 87. Interestingly, the artist used the same conceit of adding the eighth horse of the troupe to the base of the bottle.

The theme of the eight horses, bajun, originates from the legend of the eight spirited steeds belonging to Muwang (King Mu) of the famed Zhou dynasty. The character for steed, jun, is homophonous with the character for 'a talented man' and thus the image implies 'May you be one of the talented people'.

The painting is loosely modeled after the Yuan dynasty painter Zhao Mengfu (1254-1322), famous for his depictions of groups of horses cavorting in fields.