AN INSIDE-PAINTED AGATE SNUFF BOTTLE
Bottle: 1750-1860
Painting: Wang Xisan, 1982
Of squared form with shoulders sloping to a cylindrical neck and with an oval footrim, the narrow sides with mock mask-and-ring handles, painted on the inside using ink and watercolors with on one main side a couple seated on a grassy riverbank with a scholar seated at a painting table on a rug listening to a woman seated on a rock under a shady tree playing a banhu, the reverse with a couple conversing in a boat moored at the riverbank by an overhanging tree, the woman holding a fan to shade her from the sun, signed Wang Xisan with red seals, and dated; stopper.
2 1/4in (5.6cm) high
Footnotes:
壬戌年（1982） 王習三 瑪瑙内畫樹下吹簫圖鼻煙壺一件
壺: 1750-1860

Provenance:
Sotheby's, London, June 6, 1988, Property of a Gentleman, lot 321
Joan and Ted Dorf Collection, no. 15

Exhibited:
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD., September 30 – December 9, 2018

Towards the end of the Cultural Revolution Wang Xisan was able to acquire older bottles in materials other than glass to paint inside. Often his choice of scene relies to some extent on the material of the bottle and inclusions in stones such as agate and crystal. Around the mid-1960's Wang also began to use a brush with hair rather than the more traditional bamboo pen. This gave him a freedom to produce a painting that rose above the mundane and commercial. Wang is able to give depth and intensity to the painting through his brushwork providing a contrast between the lake and hills in the background and the figures at leisure in the foreground.

Very good condition. A scholarly bottle with brilliant landscape and figural execution.