Footnotes

• Treasury 4, no. 625
  
  玻璃內畫魚藻圖鼻煙壺
  朱占元，古鄭 (河南省)，1896年作
  
  A glass inside-painted 'kite-flying' snuff bottle
  
  Glass, ink and water-colours; with a slightly concave lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a protruding rounded footrim; painted on one main side with two children playing with kites, one on the trunk of a leafless willow tree flying his over a body of water, with a distant waterfall and hills beyond, the other standing on the river bank, his kite under his arm, the other main side with a catfish, two mandarin fish and ten minnows among aquatic plants, inscribed in draft script 'Drawn by Shujiao at Old Zheng in a summer month of the year bingshen', with one seal of the artist, possibly Zhu, in negative seal script
  Zhu Zhanyuan, Gu Zheng (Henan province), 1896
  Height: 6.3 cm
  Mouth/lip: 0.68/1.5 cm
  Stopper: glass; vinyl collar
  
  Condition:
  Bottle: barely imperceptible chip to the outer lip, air bubble within the glass on the footrim, and an elongated air bubble on the side towards the top. Painting: slight fading of the colours and smudges to two characters of the inscription. General relative condition: good
  
  Provenance:
  Sotheby's, Billingshurst, 25 June 1991, lot 304
  
  Published:
  Treasury 4, no. 625
  
  Exhibited:
  Christie's, London, 1999
  
  One of the strangest cases of all among the inside-painted artists of the Beijing School of Zhou Leyuan is that of Zhu Zhanyuan. There are only eleven bottles recorded by him and, while he devoted his entire career to copying the style and much of the subject matter of Zhou Leyuan, he was a very competent artist who produced several excellent paintings.
  
  His career seems to have run from 1896 to 1906, although the majority of the paintings are from the earlier period. There are four, including this one, from 1896, including one extraordinary quadruple rectangular crystal superbly painted with eight different subjects, mostly borrowed from Zhou Leyuan, although two are not known from Zhou's output, and all in his style. There are three bottles from 1897, one from 1899, one from 1900, and two from 1906. All are of very good quality, and some are masterly, including the quadruple bottle from 1896, which suggests he must have been training in the art for some time prior to that date. It is possible that he began to take up the art while Zhou was still alive, and perhaps even knew him.
  
  No other artist devoted his career to painting in the style of Zhou Leyuan while signing his own name. That an artist of his obvious talents would have done so, however few bottles he painted during that career, seems quite extraordinary, but it is the case.
  
  Although the name with which this bottle (and this bottle alone) is signed is Shujiao, we know beyond a doubt that it is the work of Zhu Zhanyuan. The subject of the boy up a tree flying a kite is one of his standard images, and the fish, in exactly this composition and style, appear on the quadruple bottle from 1896. Since there is no dedication to a third party here, there is no point in having a donor's name included, so we can assume that Shujiao is the courtesy name of Zhu Zhanyuan.
  
  There are several relatively out-of-the-way places in China called Gu Zheng, or 'ancient Zheng', among them the site of the ancient capital of Zheng, southwest of Zhengzhou in Henan province. The bottle dated 1899 is signed 'Gu Zheng, Zhanyuan' the normal manner of stating one's place of origin (see Sotheby's, London, 11 October 1974, lot 52). Since others of his works are usually inscribed as having been made at the capital, including other works in the same year, and the present bottle is the only exception, he must have worked most of his life in Beijing with a visit to his home town in 1896, when he painted this example.
  
  玻璃內畫魚藻圖鼻煙壺
  
  玻璃、墨、水彩；微凹唇，凸斂底，突出圈足，圈足底為一圓棱；一面內繪放風箏圖，一面內繪水藻游魚圖，題曰 "歲在丙申夏月寫於古鄭，樹梅作"，以白文"朱"（？）結尾
  朱占元，古鄭，1896年
  高﹕ 6.3 厘米
  口徑/唇徑： 0.68/1.5 厘米
  蓋﹕ 玻璃；乙烯基座
  
  狀態敘述：壺﹕唇外沿有幾乎看不見的缺口，圈足玻璃中有氣泡，靠上邊有拉長的氣泡。內畫﹕微微乎其微的退色，題文兩字有污點。一般性相對的狀態：善
  
  來源:
  蘇富比比靈斯斯特，1991年6月25日，拍賣品號 304
  
  文獻﹕
  Treasury 4, 編號 625
  
  展覽﹕
  倫敦佳士得，1999年
  
  朱占元是北京內畫最奇異的藝術家之一。他的確是能手，有幾件傑出的作品，可是他平生都模仿周樂元、畫周樂元所畫的母題，而且好像只有十一件內畫鼻煙壺存世。 活躍時期似乎是從1896年到1906年，作品多數是早期的。雖然只有本壺署名樹椒 （寫的是無"又"的異體字），這毫無疑問是朱占元的作品。兒童攀樹放風箏是他習用的主題；本壺的水藻游魚圖跟四一件1896年畫的四連形鼻煙壺是完全一致的。
  
  署1899紀年款的一件署名"古鄭占元"，朱占元應該是古鄭人。可是叫古鄭的地方不止一個，而都是比較偏僻的地方，不知哪個是朱占元的故鄉。
  
  其他的作品注明是北京作的，只有這一件不是，可能是回老家的時候畫的。

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Category: Asian Art / Chinese Works of Art

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