Footnotes

Treasury 6, no. 1433


瓷胎粉彩人物風景鼻煙壺
景德鎮
壺：1820～1850
琺瑯彩：程門，1890～1908


Country Life

Famille rose enamels on colourless glaze on porcelain; with a flat lip and recessed convex foot surrounded by a reticulated, flared, convex footrim; the shoulders with handles, pierced for cords, in the form of corrupted stylized animal heads; painted on one side with a scene of a man riding a horse on a grassy ground, with one seal of the artist in negative seal script, Cheng, and on the other with a scholar crossing a rock bridge in front of a waterfall in a mountainous landscape with trees, with one undeciphered seal of the artist in negative seal script; the lip, inner neck, and interior glazed.
Jingdezhen
Bottle: 1820–1850
Enamelling: Cheng Men 1890–1908
Height: 5.92 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.6/1.1 cm
Stopper: glass, carved with a coiled chi dragon
Condition: tiny abrasion on the outer lip, possibly a minor flaw in the original manufacture ground off by the maker; miniscule abrasion to the underside of one mask handle; none of it visually obtrusive. General relative condition: excellent

Provenance:
Asiantiques (1998)
Hugh Moss (HK), Ltd (1999)
Published:
Treasury 6, no. 1433

Commentary:
Cheng Men was a porcelain painter of the Qianjiang school of enamellers, who were active at Jingdezhen from about the time of the Taiping upheavals in the 1850s and 1860s to the end of the dynasty. The sudden curtailment of imperial production from 1855, when the imperial-kiln complex were burned to the ground by the Taiping rebels, forced a great many skilled potters and enamellers to fend for themselves for the next decade or so. Those who came to be known as the Qianjiang school refocused their artistic skills into a group of wares painted on porcelain in a manner similar to literati painting, signing and adding seals to their works, even dating them sometimes. For Cheng's works, see Wain 1998, nos. 3–24. Cheng Men was one of the finest enamellers of the group. He appears to have trained, at least in part, in the imperial factory but later produced a group of wares under his own name. He was active from 1862 onwards; his last known work is dated to 1908. Like Qianjiang school painters generally, he preferred a larger format, so his works on snuff bottles are extremely rare. Other artists in the group were Wang Shaowei, Jin Pinqing, and Pan Taoyu. According to Peter Wain, who was kind enough to give us his opinion on this bottle, this is a late work, probably from around 1900–1905, although we have left our usual safety margin.
The painting is typical of the school and places more emphasis on the brushwork than any other group of porcelains. The Tang Ying bottles of the early Qianlong (Treasury 6, nos. 1148–1150) are painterly, but the brushwork is still subservient to the overall painting, whereas here the artist uses a vocabulary of short strokes that take on a life of their own independently of what they describe. Even the green wash behind the horse has been applied in quick little daubs that compete for the eye's attention against the staccato strokes of the animal's legs. On the other side, the man on the left side of the chasm and the greenish rock on the right side are reduced most conspicuously to thrusts of the brush — but not because the artist was working in haste to meet a quota, as one might see on some crafts, for the strokes are confident, energetic, and artistically consistent with the more conventional handling of the trees and rocks. The whole scene could be lifted off the bottle, mounted as an album leaf, and remain impressive.

The bottle appears to have been made quite some time before it was painted. It is formally very obviously part of the group represented by Treasury 6, nos. 1285–1287, 1335, and 1347, which are probably from the Daoguang period, although the shape may have continued a little thereafter. We know from the range of decorative techniques used on this shape of bottle in other instances that some were monochrome. It appears that this one was either intended as a plain white bottle or was meant to be enamelled at the time but was left undecorated for whatever reason, coming into Cheng's hands at a later date. Of course, Cheng could have had a similar bottle made at any time, but this is unlikely. Cheng was a painter, and if he had ordered up a bottle for his canvas, it would surely have been less fancy in its own right, so as not to divert attention from the painting.


程門游行自如之郊外景色

瓷胎，無色釉上施琺瑯彩；平唇、凸斂底，鏤空凸形圈足外撇；兩側具變形獸首繫耳；一正面繪一人騎馬走草地，右上繪白文"程"一字款，另一正面繪學士過瀑布前的石橋，有白文一印，不知何字；唇、頸內壁、腹內壁施釉

景德鎮
壺：1820～1850
琺瑯彩：程門，1890～1908
高：5.92 厘米
口經/唇經：0.6/1.1 厘米
蓋：玻璃，雕蟠螭
狀態敘述：唇緣有微小的擦傷，或許是造器時由陶工磨治的瑕疵，一繫耳下面有微乎其微的擦傷，以上無所引人注目；一般相對的狀況：極善

來源：
Asiantiques (1998)
Hugh Moss (HK), Ltd (1999)
文獻﹕
Treasury 6，編號1433

說明：
程門光緒中客居景德鎮，開始在瓷器上繪畫，成為淺降彩代表藝術家之一。作品參見Wain 1998， 編號3～24。有確切年代的淺降彩作品是1855程門父子的作品，他1862年以降名動大江南北，最後傳世的作品是1908畫的。除程門外，淺降彩大家還有金品卿、王少維、潘匋宇等。Wain氏見教，本壺似乎是程門後期的作品，大約畫於1900～1905，我們乃仍然以慎為鍵，定期為1890～1908。

本壺是淺降彩典型的畫風，用筆鬆動飄逸，設色淡雅；筆致瀟洒而不草率，如果能夠把這幅畫編入晚清的畫冊則亦不遜色。

壺本身好像是道光時期的，保存了多年後才被程門繪飾了。Treasury 6， 編號1285～1287、1335、1347是同樣的壺形，有時候此類煙壺是單色的，本壺或許是白色的，或許是由於某種原因未繪飾。大概不是程門定購的，要是他叫人給他作繪畫用的小壺，它們一定會簡潔點，以便作疏朗的布局。