English
中文
Bottle ID: 00111
YAN YUTIAN, FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE
Date: 1895
Height: 62 mm
Glass, ink and watercolors, of rectangular form with sloping shoulders, painted inside with a continuous scene of figures in a landscape - two scholars in conversation outside a pavilion in which is seated a third scholar, near to a promontory where two scholars look out over a lake, by a second larger pavilion where scholars are taking tea near to a bridge with two further scholars meeting, with boats and mountains in the distance, signed 'Made by Yan Yutian, 1895' with one seal, Yutian.
Similar Examples:
Crane Collection no. 659.
Silver, Joseph Baruch. Worlds in a Bottle: Chinese Inside Painted Snuff Bottles and Traditional Paintings. The Joseph Baruch Silver Collection, 1998, p. 68, no. A-23.
Provenance:
Clare Lawrence Ltd.
Sotheby's, Hong Kong, May 2, 1991, lot 187
Arthur Gadsby Collection, Hong Kong
Exhibited:
Annual Convention ICSBS Toronto, October 2007
Yan Yutian's work is continually under-rated presumably because he turned out a large group of mediocre examples. However, he was good enough to have graduated from being a student of Zhou Leyuan and at his best could produce fine work with a highly individual and on occasion, eccentric style. In this case, Yan's depiction of what amounts to the Eastern version of the 'Ideal Landscape' (of European painting), uses his traditional palette of brown, gray and orange, strengthening the dream-like quality of his portrayal of scholars at leisure.
Previously, it was thought that all of Yan's bottles were dated 1895 or 1907; however, this has not proved to be the case with one example dated to 1894, and others to 1898, 1918 and 1919. The significance of the most popular dates, if there is any, is unknown to present day researchers.