Bottle ID: 775

< Previous page

LI KECHANG, MOUNTAINOUS LANDSCAPE SCENE

Date: Circa 1965

Height: 68 mm

Glass, of flattened rectangular form with rounded shoulders sloping to a cylindircal neck and with a neatly carved oval footrim, painted on the inside using ink and watercolors with a continuous mountainous landscape scene of a gathering of literati seated on rocks in conversation under pine trees and beside groves of bamboo, a river running through the valley.
Attributed to Li Kechang, Shandong School.

Similar Examples:

Leung, J.H. A New Look of Chinese Inside Painted Snuff Bottles, 1990, p. 155, no. 379
Bonhams Hong Kong, May 26, 2013, lot 175 (part)

Provenance:

Mary Morrison, Vancouver, Canada

 

Li Kechang was born in Beijing in 1942. At the age of eighteen he was one of 53 recruits of the Boshan Inside Painting Techniques School in Boshan, Shandong Province. He became one of the finest, if not the finest, painters of his time of what became known as the Shandong School and was president of the snuff bottle committee at the Chinese Craft Artistic Institute. He was also one of the first artists to use brushes made from goat or wolf hair. In fact when Wang Xisan saw the quality of the brushstrokes that was evident in Li's work he abandoned the use of the turned bamboo stick "brush" in favor of a hair brush. Li Kechang valued art above fame or commercialism, and to this end he never painted more than one of each example. He painted figures, animals, landscapes and so on, all unique but all in a distinct style and color palette during his thirty years of inside painting. Today Li has retired and lives in Perth, Western Australia.

< Back to full list