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Lot Essay
The inscription above the scene with the boy carrying a peach bough may be translated:
'My contemporaries do not know the joy in my heart. They will all say that I am just idling away my time, and that I strive to remain young.'
Keeping crickets and staging cricket fights were popular autumn pastimes for men and boys in China. The custom is said to have been first popular in the Tang dynasty. In this charming and nostalgic scene, boys bring their clay cricket pots together for a match, holding their insects back with thin bamboo sticks until the signal to release them. The reverse shows a playful scene with little boys chasing after their older friend, who runs about with a peach branch aloft, emulating an immortal.
It seems likely that Ma Shaoxian, the nephew of Ma Shaoxuan, worked with his uncle producing studio paintings for many years, only rarely putting out bottles under his own name. This is one of the finest of his works, and of a very unusual subject for him. It is also interesting that it is much better painted than the same subject can be by his more illustrious uncle. For details of the artist, see H. Moss, V. Graham, K.B. Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, vol. 4, Inside Painted, nos. 626 - 629, where the last is a related painting of children.
'My contemporaries do not know the joy in my heart. They will all say that I am just idling away my time, and that I strive to remain young.'
Keeping crickets and staging cricket fights were popular autumn pastimes for men and boys in China. The custom is said to have been first popular in the Tang dynasty. In this charming and nostalgic scene, boys bring their clay cricket pots together for a match, holding their insects back with thin bamboo sticks until the signal to release them. The reverse shows a playful scene with little boys chasing after their older friend, who runs about with a peach branch aloft, emulating an immortal.
It seems likely that Ma Shaoxian, the nephew of Ma Shaoxuan, worked with his uncle producing studio paintings for many years, only rarely putting out bottles under his own name. This is one of the finest of his works, and of a very unusual subject for him. It is also interesting that it is much better painted than the same subject can be by his more illustrious uncle. For details of the artist, see H. Moss, V. Graham, K.B. Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles: The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Hong Kong, 1998, vol. 4, Inside Painted, nos. 626 - 629, where the last is a related painting of children.