Footnotes

Treasury 4, no. 659


琥珀內畫鼻煙壺
壺：1760～1880
內畫：王習三，1963年


Drifting Incense Smoke

Transparent amber, ink, and watercolours; with a flat lip and recessed, convex, rounded-rectangular foot surrounded by a protruding, broad, flat footrim of the same shape; painted on one main side with a scholar seated in a boat beneath a mature pine tree in a garden with steps going down to the waters of a river, with distant mountains beyond, inscribed in draft script 'Gazing at a Wintry River Alone,' the other main side with a seated scholar meditating on a rocky plateau outside a circular doorway in a garden, with clumps of bamboo and his young attendant behind him, a volume of books at his side and an incense burner in front of him, the smoke from which is formed by a natural darker flaw in the amber, inscribed in cursive script 'Executed by Wang Xisan in the eleventh month of the year kuimao at Taiping zhuang (Peaceful Hamlet) in the capital,' preceded by a seal in negative script, Xiuzhen, 'Cultivating [Daoist] realization', and followed by two seals of the artist, Xisan and Wang, both in negative seal script

Bottle: 1760–1880
Painting: Wang Xisan, Taiping zhuang, eleventh month, 1963
Height: 5.6 cm
Mouth/lip: 0.50/1.62 cm
Stopper: pearl; coral collar
Condition: Bottle: the material with some internal flaws and one small indented area where an original flaw was probably removed; the amber crizzled somewhat—all in that state when interpreted by Wang Xisan, using part of the flaws as the incense smoke; tiny bruise and two tiny chips at the outer lip, very minor nibbling to the inner lip one small chip to the outer footrim (0.3 x 0.2 cm), two other, smaller chips to the outer footrim; one small chip repolished, leaving one outer corner of the footrim trimmed a little; none of it particularly intrusive in the hand. Painting: studio condition

Provenance:
Beijing Arts and Crafts Corporation (circa 1964)
Hugh Moss (1985)

Published:
Treasury 4, no. 659

Commentary:
Given the availability of fine old, undecorated bottles through the Beijing Arts and Crafts Corporation, which also dealt in snuff bottles and other artefacts, as the name implies, it is hardly surprising that an artist of Wang Xisan's calibre should discover the joys of interpreting natural markings in existing bottles. Although artists had used natural markings in the materials to enhance their paintings from Zhou Leyuan onwards, no one else ever exploited the full potential of this idea as Wang Xisan has. This bottle is the epitome of this mode of painting. It is not only one of the most imaginative of all his adaptations, it is the subtlest. In this lovely transparent amber bottle is a long, curling wisp of darker colouring. Under magnification, this turns out to be a series of tiny, dark impurities caught up in the flowing resin from the tree before it solidified and swept into the present sinuous form by the flow of the resin. Wang has brilliantly built his entire painting around this single natural marking in the amber, turning it, with utter conviction, into the smoke which rises from the incense burner sitting in front of the meditating scholar. It is a touch which gives the painting a dimension that lifts it above mastery of painting techniques and infuses it with the sort of magic one expects of the finest ink-play agate bottles (see under Treasury 2, no. 274).

When Wang learned the art of painting inside bottles, he was taught the traditional method by the Ye brothers. The bottle was prepared by shaking ball-bearings along with corundum powder and water inside the bottle until the interior service was evenly abraded, or frosted. It would then hold the pigments securely. The painting was then done with bamboo pens, sharply bent at the end (see discussion under Treasury 4, no. 467).

This was the traditional way of painting inside a snuff bottle first developed we believe in Beijing around 1800 or just before (see Treasury 4, pp. 9–16), and passed on through the Beijing school of Zhou Leyuan, through the Ye brothers, to Wang Xisan. It was also the method used, apparently, by the early nineteenth-century Lingnan school. The first divergence from the use of bamboo pens as the preferred instrument of painting was under the modern Shandong school. Li Kechang and his fellow students of Zhang Wentang (1885–1966) and his eldest son Zhang Dunrui apparently devised a tiny brush that could be fitted to the end of the bamboo pen (these were also demonstrated to Moss in early 1974 when he visited Ye Bengqi in Beijing and the government brought in two leading artists from Shandong province to be interviewed as well).

Wang Xisan had met Li Kechang at some time early in the 1960s. Both he and Liu Shouben, his fellow student of the Ye brothers were impressed by the brushes demonstrated to them and they both adopted and subsequently improved on them. It is sometimes difficult to tell which marking is done by a brush and which by a bamboo pen, but by the mid-1960s it is quite obvious that Wang is not only using a brush, but using it to the same ends as he would use it on paper, for long, modulated lines of great expressiveness.

With the advent of Wang's style of painting, the floodgates were open for dozens of artists without his aesthetic sensibility to paint chocolate-box images, ad nauseam, of international celebrities and their poodles, thus reducing a once noble art form to a commercial mish-mash of airport images.


掩卷生禪悅、焚香一縷煙

透明琥珀、墨、水色；平唇、微凸斂足、寬平底圈足；一面內畫文人坐松下江邊釣艇中眺望寒江平展，前景有上岸的石砌，上題行書"獨眺寒江"四字，另一面內畫一文人月亮門外趺坐蒲團，後邊有書童，文人右有一書函，其前有香爐，琥珀中的天然瑕形成上升的一縷煙，上寫"焚香養性，癸卯年仲冬王習三作於京師太平莊"，其前有"修真"白文印，其後有"習三"、"王"白文二印

壺：1760～1880
內畫：北京太平莊王習三，1963年11月
高：5.6 厘米
口經/唇經：0.50 /1.62 厘米
蓋：珍珠，珊瑚座
狀態敘述：壺：材質本來就有內部的瑕，也有好像削除過斑點的小凹，面上稍稍呈現微裂紋，如上所述，王習三利用了一條瑕璺點出煙縷，還有唇沿微小的碰傷和兩口極小的缺口，口沿有細微的蝕損，圈足外棱有0.2 x 0.3厘米的缺口，也有另外兩個缺口，圈足外棱一角因修理過而呈現削減的狀態；內畫：出齋狀態

來源：
北京工藝美術公司，約1964年
莫士撝（1985）
文獻：
Treasury 4, 編號659

說明：
王習三由北京工藝美術公司可以得到不少未畫的舊煙壺，於是他嚐到了舊壺新畫的甜頭。利用材料中的天然斑紋來襯托所畫的圖像，由周樂元以來就有，但徹底發揮這種技巧的效能，無出王習三之右者。本壺最能代表他的技術。琥珀中的雜質形成了一條卷曲線，王習三就很有把握地把它當作布局的出發點，即把它當成從香爐飄上的一縷香煙，實在是造微入妙。

王習三在北京市工藝美術研究所開始學內畫藝術的時候，他被分配到葉菶禧（曉峰）、葉菶祺門下學徒，學的是傳統的作法：先把金剛砂、滾珠、和少量水灌進壺內，反復晃動，讓壺的內壁磨出一層微裂紋，以使顏料與墨水便於附著。畫具是彎曲的竹筆。我們認為這種做法始於十九世紀初的北京，由周樂元的京派傳到葉曉峰兄弟，好像也是十九世紀初的嶺南派的做法。魯派藝人則用毫毛筆，裝於竹筆尖端的毛筆是張文堂（1885～1966）和其長子張敦瑞的學生李克昌（筆名李燮，1942年生）等人發明的。（莫士撝1974年在北京訪問葉菶祺的時候，人民政府也派了兩位山東內畫家來參與、給莫士撝示教了魯派毛筆的用法。）

王習三六十年代初就認識了李克昌，他跟同學劉守本看了魯派毫毛筆之後就採用了，並且改良了。有時候，竹筆畫的和內畫毛筆畫的難以辨別，但到了六十年代中期王習三顯在用毛筆，而其用途就如同宣紙上用毛筆畫出富於不同質感的筆畫。

自王習三的畫法問世，為庸俗畫家開了一道口子，他們就滾滾滔滔製出了國際明星和卷毛狗那一號的題目的內畫煙壺，把曾為高尚的藝術搞成機場記念品銷售處陳設的雜亂一堆貨品。