Page 156 - japanese and korean art Utterberg Collection Christie's March 22 2022

This sculpture is thought to date to the 1680s, when Enku was
in the Nikko area. The inscription in ink on the back, probably
not by Enku, is illegible except for a few words—clues to the
approximate date and the provenance: 元禄二年己巳六月十四日”
Genroku ninen tsuchinoto-mi rokugatsu nijuyokka (24 June 1689); 明覚
院 Myogaku-in.
The current owner’s grandfather, Yoshiara Yasuzo, was a member
of the Tochigi prefectural assembly in the small city of Nikko,
in the mountains north of Tokyo. Just before or after the war,
he was asked by the abbot of a local temple, the Myogaku-in, to
buy his temple’s main hall. Before the hall was moved to Yasuzo’s
garden, the abbot removed what he considered to be the important
Buddhist sculptures, but he left Enku’s Kannon, as Enku’s work
was not considered significant at that time. Today, there is no more
popular sculptor in Japan.
Yasuzo was at the center of the local cultural elite. He had
relationships with many individuals in the world of art and culture,
including the poet Takahama Kiyoshi; the painters Kosugi Hoan,
Ogawa Usen, Maruyama Banka and Nakamura Fusetsu; and the
poet and painter Shimizu Hian, at one time the mayor of Nikko.
Others who also visited and stayed at his home were the Kabuki
actors Nakamura Kichiemon; Nakamura Shikan; and Matsumoto
Koshiro. One visitor in the summer of 1961 was the famous potter
Hamada Shoji (shown with the Enku sculpture in the photo here),
a Living National Treasure, who worked in the pottery town of
Mashiko, also in Tochigi Prefecture (fig. 1). Hamada was a canny
collector of folk art and must have coveted this piece.
Enku was born into a poor family in Gifu Prefecture in the
early 17th century and left home as a boy to enter a local temple
affiliated with the Tendai sect. In his twenties, he learned the
rudiments of carving from itinerant woodworkers and began
traveling as an itinerant monk-sculptor, leaving behind thousands
of rough-hewn, powerful Buddhist images, many of which he
donated to local temples and the people who gave him shelter
along the way.

Fig.1 Photo of Yoshiara Yasuzo, Hamada Shoji and
the current lot (from left to right) at the home of
Yoshiara, 1961