AN INSIDE-PAINTED GLASS BOTTLEChen Zhongsan Signed and dated wuwu year, corresponding to 1918 Painted with Huang Chengyan or Meng Haoren riding a donkey approaching a bridge in a winter river landscape, followed by his trusted assistant clutching a freshly picked prunus blossom spray and with a gourd vessel strapped to his back, the reverse painted with cricket among flowering leafy begonia below the signature, date and seal; stopper. 2 3/8in (6cm) high 1918年 陳仲三 玻璃内畫人物及蟋蟀花卉圖鼻煙壺 Provenance: Robert C. Eldred, 25 August 1994, lot 122 Exhibited: International Chinese Snuff Bottle Society Convention, New York, 5-9 November 2013, no. 57 來源： Robert C. Eldred拍賣行，1994年8月25日，拍品編號122 展覽： 國際中國鼻烟壺協會年會，紐約，2013年11月5-9日，號57 According to Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 4, Part 1, Inside Painted , Hong Kong, 2000, p. 531, only forty-two dated and fifteen un-dated bottles are recorded by this artist and only four are known from 1918. His working period as part of the Beijing School appears to have been between 1907 and 1921. For another example with extremely similar subject-matter to each side but dated to 1909, see , New York, 9 September 2019, lot 105, a bottle formerly in the Bob C. Stevens Collection and then the Mei Ling Collection. For further discussion of the subject painted on one side of this bottle from the novel Sanguo yanyi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), see Ka Bo Tsang, 'Who is the Rider on the Donkey? Some New Observations,' ICSBS Journal , Summer 1994, pp. 5-10. Generally the rider is identified as Haung Chengyan when his assitant carries a gourd vessel and as Meng Haoren, when the assistant carries a prunus spray. However, the determination on identification, when the assistant carries both attributes, has yet to be satisfactorily answered.