Page 20 - Bonhams September 12 2018 New York Japanese Works of Art

9
FUKUDA MICHIHARU 福田路晴 This richly decorated plaque depicts a celebrated episode from
A Bronze Plaque Depicting Minamoto no Yoshimitsu Playing the Japan’s medieval past. Minamoto no Yoshimitsu (1056–1127), the
Shō younger and more artisticallly inclined brother of the great warrior
足柄山源義光図象嵌ブロンズ額 Minamoto no Yoshiie, studied the shō, a vertical panpipe akin to the
Meiji era (1868–1912), late 19th century Chinese sheng, from a famous master named Toyohara Tokimoto.
Cast and chiseled in high relief with details in gold, silver, shakudō, After the master’s early death, his orphaned son Toyohara Tokiaki
and shibuichi, depicting Minamoto no Yoshimitsu in formal attire feared that Yoshimitsu might be killed in combat without passing
seated on a rock beneath a paulownia tree, his right leg resting on on his musical secrets. Accordingly, on his way to fight alongside
his left thigh, and holding a panpipe to his mouth, the full moon, his brother in the Gosannen no eki (Latter Three-Year War, 1080s),
distant trees and military banners in the background, the design Yoshimitsu paused at Mount Ashigara on the border of Sagami
with a cast bronze border simulating bamboo, the whole within the Province and taught Tokiaki everything he had learned from
original hardwood frame, the plaque signed with chiseled characters Tokimoto. Military banners in the background suggest the impending
on a vertical gold plaque at lower right Fukuda Michiharu battle, but Yoshimitsu’s young pupil is not shown.

25 3/8 × 18 1/4 in. (64.5 × 46.5 cm) As with the charger featuring Takashima Ōiko (see lot 2), this subject
had recently been popularized by the print-designer Tsukioka
$25,000 - 35,000 Yoshitoshi (1839–1892), in this case as one of the images (published
in October 1889) in his famous series Tsuki hyakushi (One Hundred
Aspects of the Moon). The present design, however, is very different
from Yoshitoshi’s and must have been taken from another source that
has yet to be identified.

Reference
Stevenson 1992, pp. 53–69, cat. no. 70

18 | BONHAMS