Page 54 - March 15 2017 The Ruth and Carl Barron Collection

•370
AN UNUSUAL INSIDE-PAINTED GLASS SNUFF BOTTLE
SIGNED MA SHAOXUAN, DATED DINGYOU YEAR (1897)
The bottle is decorated on one side with a fgure in a sampan fshing
within a mountainous landscape interspersed with a few huts. The
reverse has a long inscription which incorporates the date, frst
month of dingyou, and the poem Lou Shi Ming (‘A Eulogy On My
Humble Abode’), followed by the name and seal of the artist.
2Ω in. (6.4 cm.) high
$8,000-10,000

PROVENANCE

Robert Kleiner, London, 2007.
Ruth and Carl Barron Collection, Belmont, Massachusetts,
no. 4647.
Lou Shi Ming is a well-known poem by the Tang-dynasty poet Liu
Yuxi (772-842) describing the joy of maintaining a cultured and
refned spiritual life while living in a simple dwelling. For more
discussion on the inside-painted snuf bottles by Ma Shaoxuan
with the same subject and the translation of the excerpt seen on
this present bottle (with an additional line, which can be translated
as ‘My companions are the most learned; there is not a single
friend unversed in letters’), please see lot 323 in this catalogue.
丁酉年(1897) 馬少宣作玻璃内畫「陋室銘」詩文鼻煙壺

52 THE RUTH AND CARL BARRON COLLECTION OF FINE CHINESE SNUFF BOTTLES: PART IV