Scholar and Beauty- Date? Artist?

[RW]

Hi All,
 Continuing with my recent lean towards collecting IP's, I acquired this piece a short while ago in an auction lot which featured 2 modern IP's together with this one. The quality of each of the other 2 bottles was about equal, and not very interesting to me. However, I chose to bid on the lot only because I liked the character in this one in both the details and color by the painter in the eyes, lips, clothing folds, etc. with nice use of fade techniques, giving some images the quality of appearing to be a great distance apart from the central views with neatly done calligraphy. But it was the image of the scholar holding a scroll? that caught my attention at first, keeping with scholarly themed bottles and objects as part of my larger collection of Asian works. And, I felt the scene of the opposite side showing the "beauty" fetching water with a pot tied to a long string was also interesting and nicely done

H: 3"; 76mm
Mouth: 3/16" Diam; 4.8mm

 Any comments would be greatly appreciated

Kevin

[George]

Nice one Kevin..

I can only help with the date, which is ting-mao year 1927.  Not sure what he is holding.. Does not look like a scroll. 

[Pat - 查尚杰]

This is a 1987 bottle based on style.

[Steven]

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for sharing, I really like the bottle, and agree with Pat that it dates 1987.

The figures were painted very well, I specially like the scholar. The trees and grass are also well painted altho not as good as the figures. The calligraphy need to be improved tho.

The artist is JieBin 杰彬 which I think its a first name, apparently I can't find any other bottles associated with the artist nor I can find the name on Peter's datebase.

Steven

[RW]

Thank you everyone for your posts

Steven,
 I am glad you like the way the scholar was done, the bottle fits well then in my collection of items with related themes
And, I appreciate the information on the artist's name. at least I have something to work with in my search for the full name and then hopefully a bio(?)

Best,

Kevin

[Peter Bentley 彭达理]

Hi Kevin,

It's  indeed a  lovely  bottle . I love the  soft  pastel colors and the   sort of  "peaceful"  feeling  about  both the   paintings

I confirm that   Jie Bin  appears  nowhere  in my  DB

I also agree   with Pat  that  it's  most  likely  1987 (not  1927 because  if 1927  there  were  so few  artists   around that  this  name  would  have  surely have  turned  up  somewhere  else  in  catalogs  of  Middle  Period  bottles - based  on the   skill  of the   artist )

If  it's  indeed   1987 my best   guess is that  :

1.  It's a  high quality "tourist -gift-shop"  bottle :  a  lot  of these  were  of course  purchased  in the   1980s  by the  first  "mass-tourist"  visitors to  China   just  after   China  opened  up, and  now  they  are  finding  their  way  into   auctions, often  by way of home clearance  sales 30 years  later.
 
2.  The  artist  was probably  just a   (good) student   who  came and  went,  painting  commercially  for 
     high-class   tourist  gift  shops
     
     I'm  not   an expert on calligraphy  but  it  does  look to me that the  rather   simple  "text-book"  clarity 
     of the  characters   give me the  feeling   they were  painted  by a   student  rather  than a  Master (who 
     would  have  written  more fluidly)

3.  The  name  "Jie  Bin" is    definitely   an  art  name because  Jie  is not  one  of the   300 +
     Chinese  family  names

      My wife  tells  me  that  Jie Bin  sounds   like a  man's  (art)  name  - rather  than a  woman's.

4. In conclusion, to be  realistic  it's   very  unlikely that  you   will ever  find  out  anything  more
   about this   artist, sorry to say.

However, I have  entered   this  artist  into  my  DB  with all your  pics  and copies  of the   correspondence.
So if  later,  someone   finds another  Jie  Bin  bottle,  I hope  they  will  post it  on the  Forum and  then   someone  who has an up-to-date  copy of  my  DB  will  link it  up  with your  bottle

Cheers

Peter

[RW]

Hi Peter,

with greater knowledge comes a greater passion-  my favorite saying and it applies here for me

many thanks to you for imparting such great info

Best,
 Kevin

[aidan31]

Dear Kevin-

I think the male (scholar) figure is carrying a musical instrument in a cloth wrapper.  I'm sure some of our Chinese members would be able to tell you the name of the instrument.

Very nice bottle.

Best,
Rick

[RW]

Dear Rick,
 Thank you for your post,  I never would have thought of that

Best,
Kevin

[Steven]

Rick was right about the instrument. It was "qin".

The inscript on the scholar side is "BoYa's elegant charm" 伯牙雅致 Yu Boya is a very famous Qin player, there is some great stories about the Boya and Zhong Zhiqi. see the wikipedia link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Ya

[rpfstoneman]

Kevin,

Below is a bottle of mine showing a scholarly figure with with a "qin".  The image on my bottle is a common theme and has been painted by a number of different artists.   Really enjoy your bottle and I too like the softer color usage.  Thanks for sharing the bottle.

Charll

 

[YT]

Dear Kevin,

I believe it is not just the painting of the people but also how the leaves were drawn that made the bottle looked serene. Nice try/catch! I am not into modern IPs so will not try to go in-depth.


Dear Steven,

Good link on the Bo Ya story. I have attached a glass overlay with Bo Ya playing the Qin/Chinese Zither on the first photo. Zhong ZiQi who is a woodcutter with his wood pile on the other side.

Cheers,
YT

[Peter Bentley 彭达理]

Hi  again  Kevin,

The  more  I  look  at   your  bottle  the  more I think  it was  painted  by a  young  student  (using a  temporary pen name, as they  often do when  developing their  skills, and then  sell off the bottles to the  commercial  high-class  tourist  gift shops in order   to  make  a  living)  -  but a   student   who  later  went on  become a  great (and famous)  artist

One of my earliest  bottles   was  of  a  spider hanging from a  single  thread from its  web. It was  unsigned and  undated,  although I knew  when  it was  painted   to  within a  year  or  so (roughly 2008).   So I guessed (correctly) it was  by an up-coming  student.

It  was  supremely   beautiful  and  simple,  but  it  spoke  of a  great   artist-in-the-making.

( I wrote  about this   recently   somewhere  else  on the  Forum  : "The Freshness of Young Artists")

It took me  3  years  to finally   discover  who the  artist  is.  He  is  now   quite  well-known and he  has used   various  pen-names  as he  progressed.

But I still  think that  the  little  spider  bottle  I bought  in 2008  which he never  even  signed at the  time  was one of his finest-ever  works . Certainly  it's my  favorite   work by that artist .

If you keep  searching  and  asking  you may eventually  find  out  who  Jie  Pin really is !
It only takes  one   casual   cross-link  which this  thread  sparks  in another  collector's  mind   to  close the  loop. 

In the  meantime  - keep  buying for  love and  passion.
Seems you  have a good  eye   for  real  beauty in a  bottle 

That's   a very rare  talent.

Cheers
Peter

____________________________

PS :  Charll  :  WHO  painted that  bottle  you  showed ?!  It's   amazing !
       
There  is  both  great  skill   and  detail  in the  painting, and well  definitely  something  " super-extra"
Look at the  tree leaves  : that  degree  of  delicacy  is  20  years  ahead of its  time. I have rarely  seen  leaves  painted  that  particular  way    -with the   trunk in white  - until  very recently  by some  true  grand masters (e.g.  Fu Guoshun)
And the same  goes for the  waterfall : very few  top VMIPB  artists  can paint  waterfalls   that well, even today.

It's  definitely a  masterpiece !

[RW]

 Charll,

 Very much appreciate your post, and I love your bottle- a really special one, congratulations!

Peter
 Hello,
 
 Very interesting topic re the practice by some young artists to use pen names in the early stages of their careers. And, how exciting it must have felt to make the discovery that a favorite IP was done by the student who had gone on to achieve a degree of fame for their work, while dropping any assumed name. It tells a nice story I think

Best,
Kevin
PS: on the pun- I like it