Page 109 - japanese and korean art Utterberg Collection Christie's March 22 2022

35
SHIBATA ZESHIN (1807-1891)
Cat and Silver Vine
Signed and sealed Zeshin
Hanging scroll; ink, lacquer and gold on paper
11 x 9æ in. (27.9 x 24.8 cm.)
With a wood box titled Urushi-e matatabi no zu (Lacuqer painting,
Cat and silver vine) with an illegible seal on the lid, authenticated
by Shibata Shinsai (1858-1895), the second son of Zeshin, on
reverse

$20,000-30,000

EXHIBITED:
"Zeshin: Shibata Zeshin no shikko, urushi-e, kaiga", Nezu
Museum, Tokyo, 1 November-16 December 2012
LITERATURE:
Zeshin: Shibata Zeshin no shikko, urushi-e, kaiga (Zeshin: Shibata
Zeshin's lacquerworks, lacuqer paintings and paintings) (Tokyo:
Nezu Museum, 2012), cat. no. 119.

The long-lived lacquer artist Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891) was
one of the elite group of craftsmen schooled in the fashions
of the Edo period who made the great leap from the dictates
of the feudal society into the Age of Enlightenment and
Westernization in Japan in the Meiji era (1868 -1912). He was
apprenticed at the age of eleven to the great inro artist Koma
Kansai II (1767-1835) from whom he learned the traditional
techniques of makie. He developed the technique of using
lacquer as a painting medium which gives an impression of
richness and three-dimensionality. The lacquer painting of
Grasshopper in the collection of Metropolitan Museum, shows
Zeshin’s skillful brushwork and various texture with lacquer
(fig. 1.)
In 1891 Zeshin was appointed a Teishitsu Gigei-In [Imperial
Artist], and became a professor of the University of Fine Arts
in Tokyo together with his fellow Imperial Artist Kano Natsuo
(1828-1898).

Fig.1 Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891), Lacquer
Paintings of Various Subjects: Grasshopper
on Gourd Vine. Japan. Meiji Period, c. 1882.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
The Howard Mansfield Collection, Purchase,
Rogers Fund, 1936, 36.100.105.