PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION A Fine Inside-Painted 'landscape' Crystal BottleSigned Zhou Leyuan and dated Autumn Renchen year corresponding to 1892 Of flattened rectangular shape, extremely well painted with a continuous mountainous lakeside scene with a scholar and his assistant on a grassy promontory with pine and another tree below the inscription and seal on one side, and a figure punting a boat near a low thatched building on a grassy outcrop with a waterfall and stream beyond and mountains in the far distance. 2 3/16in (5.4cm) high, stopper, box 周樂元壬辰款 (1892 年) 水晶内繪山水鼻烟壺 Zhou Leyuan is acknowledged as the most pivotal snuff bottle artist of the late Qing dynasty. The art of the inside-painted bottle reached its zenith between the 1880s and the 1920s with Zhou Leyuan as the single most influential figure amongst a host of many. For a full discussion of his supremacy in the field, see Hugh Moss, Victor Graham and Ka Bo Tsang, A Treasury of Chinese Snuff Bottles, The Mary and George Bloch Collection, Vol. 4, Part I, Inside Painted , pp. 90-93, no. 465. He is one of the great classic landscape artists working in this miniature form. He seems to re-invent and re-think even the most superficially similar landscape subjects, like the trees, mountains and lakes. For further discussion of his work and an earlier bottle, dated 1884, with a similar subject but painted in a darker palette, see Michael C. Hughes, The Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, Chinese Snuff Bottles , Baltimore, 2009, pp. 256-257, no. 198. For two other landscape bottles dated to the 1892, see Sotheby's, New York, The Joe Grimberg Collection of Chinese Snuff Bottles, 14 September 2010, lot 33; and 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 , pp. 178-180, no. 499.