A Hundred Children

Inside-painted bottle is one of snuff bottles. The art of inside painting originates from Beijing. The story goes from that in the Qing dynasty during the reign of Dao Guang(1821-1850), an impoverished scholar was addicted to snuff. When he did not have enough money to buy tobacoo, he scraped his snuff bottle from inside with a bamboo slip to get the alternation----- tobacoo tar. Gradually, the marks left on the inner wall of the bottle made a picture, arousing the interest of folk artists. And they began to paint on inside wall of snuffs. In the beginning the picture were simple and roughly. But by the reign of Guang Xu(1875-1980), the art had been perfect. Artists made delicate drawing with bamboo slips or calligraphy brushes on the bottles’ polished inner walls.

Today , inside-painted art is divided into three categories—— the Jing(Beijing)，the Ji(Hebei), the Lu(Shandong). Wang xisan is the representative of the Jing school. In 1957 Wang studied under the famous inside-painters Ye Xiaofeng and Ye xiaosan. He further developed the art by absorbing the good pointed of different schools and using the traditional tool, bamboo and wood slips as well as writing brushes. Finally, he broke the traditional theme limit of characters and flowers and grass and portray a kitten playing with a butterfly on its tail, a picture full of wit and humor. Wang  xisan was made the first to use calligraphy on snuff bottle picture. In recent years his bottle drawing ,using the techniques borrowed from Western oil painting , have been praised in China and abroad. His picture TWO Monkeys was awarded a prize for excellence by the 12th international Snuff Bottle Artists’ Association in 1980. Pu yi and Wang Rong was appraised as the best work by the 13th and in 1985 American presidents won recognition as a unique piece of Chinese art.