Description
Glass; a jarlet painted on the inside with a continuous scene of fish and dragonflies among leafy clusters of a folowering lotus, By Ye Xiaofeng, Beijing.
Ye Xiaofeng was the second of three sons of the celebrated Beiiing artist, Ye Zhongsan, whose career had began in 1892. According to Hugh Moss, who interviewed Xiaofen’s younger brother, Ye Bengqi, in 1974, Xiaofeng began to paint in or around 1920, but he signed all of his earlier work in the name of his father, as part of the output of the Apricot Grove Studio, apart from one example dated 1927 signed in his own name (see Journal of the I.C.S.B.S, Spring 1984 p.71).
In the 1950s Xiaofeng and his brother founded a school of inside-painting, which had among its pupils who were to become celebrated, Wang Xisan, Liu Shouben (see nos. 161-3 below), Ye Shuying and Ding Hong. From that date onwards Xiaofeng signed in his own name.
The subject of fish and lotus was one of the staples of the Apricot Grove Studio, but in this instance the dotted background shows a little more individuality a sign, perhaps, that Xiaofeng was at last trying to break the mould.
He has used an old glass snuff jarlet, of a type which became popular in the early nineteenth century. A Similar jarlet, in hair crystal, by the Ye family, is illustrated in Treasury 4, no. 649
