Footnotes

Treasury 4, no. 658


水晶內畫熊貓猿猴鼻煙壺
壺：大概為頒賜類，1760～1860
內畫：王習三，北京北太平莊，1962年

Serious Panda Bears

Flawless crystal, ink, and watercolours; with a concave lip and recessed flat foot surrounded by a protruding broad, flattened footrim; the narrow sides carved with mask-and-ring handles; painted on one main side with four gibbons, one a baby in its mother's arms, beside a series of rapids flowing beneath a mature pine tree in which one of the gibbons climbs holding a flower in one hand, the other main side with two pandas in a bamboo grove, inscribed in draft script 'In the winter of the year renyin Wang Xisan executed this at Taiping zhuang (Peaceful Hamlet) in the capital', with two seals of the artist, Wang and Xisan, both in negative seal script

Bottle: probably Official school, 1760–1860
Painting: Wang Xisan, Taiping zhuang, Beijing vicinity, 1962
Height: 7.18 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.80/2.68 cm
Stopper: aquamarine; gilt-brass collar

Condition: Bottle: perfect. Painting: studio condition

Provenance:
Unrecorded source (1970–1973)
Hugh Moss (1985)
Published:
JICSBS, December 1980, p. 23
Kleiner 1987, no. 308
Treasury 4, no. 658
Exhibited:
New Orleans, October 1980 (Member's Display — prize-winning bottle)
Sydney L. Moss Ltd., London, October 1987
Creditanstalt, Vienna, May–June 1993
Christie's, London, 1999

Commentary
In another lovely early crystal bottle, this is further proof of the mastery achieved by Wang Xisan so soon after beginning his career. By the winter of 1962, Wang had been painting bottles for just under five years, having begun training in February 1958, less than the period Ma Shaoxuan trained before he was willing to present works to his father for serious consideration (see under Treasury 4, no. 576) and only about half the time it took for Ma to reach even the hesitant stage he had reached by 1894. Yet here is Wang, after only a little more than four years in the field, producing masterpieces of a quality that would stand on an equal footing with any in the history of the art.

It is, as always, a fresh subject and composition for the art form, although the image of the two pandas was painted earlier in the year with the two beasts in a similar pose but in a much simpler grove (Hugh Moss Records). The bears were much less subtly painted, and it is obvious that Wang continued to ponder how to improve on this new subject. This represents his answer, where he has increased the complexity of the setting, reduced the size of the two bears, and painted them with much greater subtlety. The quality of the painting is beyond question, but what is even more astonishing is that Wang has managed to paint pandas without the main theme being their cute and cuddly nature. This alone is no mean feat in modern China. At the time, Chinese painting was beginning to suffer from the constraints of Communism and was in the throes of turning the world's most sophisticated aesthetic culture with a pictorial tradition that had been fully mature for a thousand years to the task of 'serving the people' by painting appropriately encouraging images. The next few years would see a spate of smiling workers climbing electricity pylons in a blizzard to reconnect power, cute images of grinning children delighting in their Communist utopia while doing their part for the state, and hundreds of other kitsch paintings that brought art down to the lowest possible common denominator as obsequious servant of a political ideology. These years of the emasculation of Chinese painting would take their toll on Wang's work later, but in the early 1960s, he was able to paint a pair of pandas primarily as a work of art and not as an act of propaganda or as an anodyne attempt to capture just their saccharine surface appeal so as not to offend anyone in power. Later, during the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution and the subsequent domination of the Gang of Four, offering offence as an artist might cost you your life. This led to a climate that encouraged in art only spiritually bereft, politically correct, pretty pictures that would not offend. It caused as much harm to the noble tradition of Chinese painting as had any previous political upheaval.

In these early years, however, Wang was free of all these problems, as his newly adopted studio name, Peaceful Hamlet, implies. Wang had found peace, doing what he wanted to do and developing the art that he had chosen as his own. The Peaceful Hamlet refers to the Beijing Arts and Crafts Corporation workshop which was set up in 1962
and to which the Ye brothers and their students were moved in that year. The same designation is given to it in another bottle in the Bloch Collection, lot 50, (Treasury 4, no. 659), dated to 1963, proving that it was not his place of painting prior to the move. This was the studio where Moss visited the remaining artists in 1974, although Wang himself had long since been banished to the hometown he had never really known (for the artists working at the studio in Beijing at that time, see Treasury 4, no. 668).

For the 1980 convention of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, in New Orleans, Hugh Moss loaned this bottle to Alex S. Cussons, his good friend and one of the great English pioneers of collecting from the mid-century. In those days collectors would bring their bottles to the convention and display them in special cabinets and everyone would vote on the best bottle in each of half a dozen categories, the awards to be announced at the final banquet. Much prestige was attached to this award, of course, since collectors then were not so sophisticated as they are now and a little applause from one's fellow collectors helped overcome a few uncertainties from time to time. Cussons was unable to enter any of his own bottles at the time, since he had sold most of the collection and what remained were in his home in South Africa, so he asked Moss to lend him a bottle. It was the year of the Monkey and there was to be a category specially for any bottle decorated with a monkey, so Moss lent him this bottle and, of course, it won hands down.

不裝可愛的熊貓

無瑕的水晶、墨、水色；凹唇、平面斂底、寬而磨平的足圈，兩側浮雕獸首銜環；一面內畫山澗中四猴，包括一幼猴在母猴懷裏；另一面繪竹林中兩熊貓，上題"壬寅之冬王习三作於京師太平庄"，其後落白文 "王"與"習三" 二印

壺：大概為頒賜類，1760～1860
內畫：王習三，北京北太平莊，北京工藝美術公司，1962年
高：7.18 厘米
口經/唇經：0.80/2.68 厘米
蓋：海藍寶石，描金黃銅座
狀態敘述: 壺：完善；內畫：出齋狀況

來源：
未錄來源 （1970～1973）
莫士撝 （1985）

文獻：
《國際中國鼻煙壺協會的學術期刊》Journal of the International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society, 1980年12月，頁23
Kleiner 1995, 編號308

Treasury 4, 編號658

展覽：
新奧爾良，1980年10 月，國際中國鼻煙壺協會年會會員展覽（獲獎）
Sydney L. Moss Ltd, 倫敦, 1987年10 月
Creditanstalt, 維也納, 1993年5月至6月
佳士得，倫敦，1995

說明：
到了1962年冬天，王習三在北京工藝美術研究所只學了五年的工藝，倒已達到了本壺所體現的熟練程度。馬少宣學了快十年的內畫技術還是有待改進的，可見王習三既是後起之秀，又是才華過人的。

1962 年初，王習三畫了另一雙熊貓，熊貓的身態跟本壺的相似， 只是畫得不如本壺能表現出熊貓的性情風貌，竹林也簡單一點（據莫士撝未付梓知見錄）。他籌思了好久才畫了本煙壺，結果場景畫得更周詳，熊貓縮小而傳神，非常成功。最難得可貴的是，王習三畫的熊貓不像一般新中國噴涌的憨態可掬、逗人喜愛的熊貓。那時，要麼是社會主義現實主義畫品，要麼是作為民間藝術風的庸俗作品，識時務的藝術品快要壟斷文藝壇了，單純以藝術家為己任的角度來對付象徵中國的熊貓這個繪畫題目，再過幾年就是有點偏激了。可在文革黑色風暴襲來之前，王習三還能注意繪畫功夫，想辦法更好地構成內畫意境。

《國際中國鼻煙壺協會的學術期刊》1980年12月號把本壺和Alex Cussons聯系，而我們來源敘述沒把他列入。Alex S. Cussons 是二十世紀中期先導的煙壺收藏家之一， 也是莫士撝的好友。他參加國際中國鼻煙壺協會1980年在美國新奧爾良開的年會的時候，他收藏系列多半已經賣出了，殘餘的煙壺都在他南非洲的家裏，為了參加當代每年舉行的會員珍品展覽，他就向莫士撝求了一件煙壺。那年正好是猴年，會員珍品展覽發獎六門之一是綴飾猴子的煙壺，莫士撝就把這件壺借給Cussons氏，果然不戰而勝。那不到五天的保管時光算藝術品由來嗎？恕不同意。