Bottle ID: 795

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ZHANG BAOTIAN, GLASS, CAMELS AND THEIR DRIVERS

Date: Winter, 1897

Height: 60 mm

A glass snuff bottle, painted on the inside using ink and watercolors in sepia tones, of flattened rectangular form with a cylindrical neck and an oval footrim, with a continuous scene of camels and their drivers, a huntsman carrying a dead stag and a rabbit on a stick over his shoulders, another figure with a large pack on his back and three mounted horsemen pursuing two further deer in landscape outside a small group of tents, inscribed in running script Dingyou dongyue jingshi Zhang Baotian zuo丁酉冬月京師張葆田作 (Made by Zhang Baotian at the Capital in the winter of the dingyou year), with one seal of the artist, tian yin田印 (seal of tian)

Similar Examples:

Crane Collection no. 659 (by Yan Yutian)

Provenance:

Hugh Moss, Hong Kong 
Franz Collection, October 2008 
Robert Kleiner & Co. Ltd., April 1991

 

 

PUBLISHED:

Hugh Moss and Stuart Sargent.  The Water, Pine and Stone Retreat Collection of Snuff Bottles.  Part Two.  Non-imperial Influence over the Snuff Bottle Arts.  No. 21.5.304

Zhang Baotian was one of the better commercial artists working in Beijing who followed in the footsteps of Zhou Leyuan.  He was capable of fine decorative painting, and occasionally managed to even rise above decorativeness.  His subject matter was constantly intriguing and surprising and among his most impressive works is a series of paintings including camels, which were a common enough sight in Beijing which was effectively the Eastern terminus of the Silk Road, since so much of what came along it from the West ended up in Beijing and a common form of transport was the camel.

 

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