A large inside-painted 'bird-subject' glass snuff bottle
Ye Zhongsan, 1931
Of large rounded rectangular shape with plain main faces and large well-carved lion-mask fixed-ring handles on the narrow sides, painted to the interior on one main face with a rooster amidst mossy rockwork and peony, the reverse with crowned kingfisher-type birds similarly set within mossy rocks and peony sprays, all in attractive pastel shades, dated xinwei and signed Ye Zhongsan with a painted seal.
2 3/8in (5.8cm) high, stopper
Footnotes:
1931年 葉仲三 玻璃內畫花鳥圖鼻煙壺

Provenance:
New York, May 1991

See 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. 69, for a bottle painted with a similar subject of a rooster amongst mossy rockwork but dated to 1899, where the authors discuss the influence of the pioneering Zhou Leyuan. In this bottle, some thirty years later, the artist is still able to imbue the subject with a vivacity despite the intervening years.