Page 56 - September 21 2021 MAnfred Arnold Collection snuff bottles Bonhams NYC

437
AN INSIDE-PAINTED GLASS SNUFF BOTTLE
Ma Shaoxuan
Signed and dated yisi year, corresponding to 1905
Of rounded rectangular shape, superbly painted on one side with
a grouping of a miniature pine in a planter, a crackled-ware jar with
peony, and mossy open work rock below the signature and seal
Shaoxuan, the other side with four poetic inscriptions written in
differing scripts, kaishu, lishu, xingshu and xiao zhuanshu; stopper.
2 1/2in (6.3cm) high
$8,000 - 12,000

已巳年(1905) 馬少宣 玻璃内畫清供圖及四體詩文鼻煙壺

Provenance:
Madame Chao Chang Huaitung
Sotheby’s, New York, The Madame Chao Chang Huaitung Collection,
23 March 2004, lot 304.
Hugh Moss (HK) Ltd., 23 September 2005

Exhibited:
International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society Convention, Waldorf Astoria,
New York, 5-9 November 2013, no. 112

Madame Chao Chang Huaitung (1910-2002) was the third daughter
of Marshall Chang Tso Lin, and half sister to the Marshal’s oldest son,
Chang Hsueh Liang, later known as the Young Marshal, who later
controlled Manchuria and was involved in a plot to kidnap Chiang
Kaishek.

The same four inscriptions written in regular, draft, clerical and seal
scripts is repeated on another Ma bottle dated to 1910, with an
assemblage of ‘torn’ documents on the opposite side and is illustrated
by Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, Treasury, Vol. 4, Part
2, pp. 411-413, no. 594 and discussed at length. It is also illustrated
by Ma Zengshan, Inside-Painted Snuff Bottle Artist Ma Shaoxuan
(1867-1939), Baltimore, 1997, pp. 80-82, figs. 80 and 81.

Another superb undated example with the same four poetic
inscriptions to one side and two paintings and two calligraphic works
to the other was sold at Sotheby’s, Hong Kong, ‘A Private Collection of
Scholarly and Imperial Works of Art’, 4 April 2012, lot 3057.

54 | BONHAMS