Page 43 - Christie's The Joseph Collection of Japanese Art
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ZESHIN IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
The long-lived lacquer artist Shibata Zeshin (1807- lacquer in simulation of Rimpa-style lead inlay (sahari-
1891) was one of the elite group of craftsmen schooled nuri), of red sandalwood (shitan-nuri), in simulation of
in the fashions of the Edo period, who made the great iron rust (sabi-age), and the inlay of various materials,
leap from the dictates of the feudal society into the Age extending the range of surface textures which had been
of Enlightenment and Westernisation in Japan in the introduced by Ogawa Haritsu (Ritsuo), and notably
Meiji era (1868 -1912). (seigaiha-nuri), the depiction of sea waves by combing
He was apprenticed at the age of eleven to the great the lacquer before it had hardened.
inro artist Koma Kansai II (1767-1835) from whom he His patronage by the Imperial Household was frmly
learned the traditional techniques of makie. When he established when he made a lacquered riding crop
was sixteen he went to study under the Maruyama- bearing the chrysanthemum mon for the Emperor
Shijo painter Suzuki Nanrei (1775-1844), and in 1833 Meiji in 1872. And in 1875 he was appointed as
received from Nanrei who called him by the familiar one of the artists enabled to examine and advise
name Reisai, the names Zeshin and Tanzan, and the on the preservation of the lacquer works in the 8th
art name Rensai. Through Nanrei, Zeshin had met century Imperial repository of the Todaiji temple, the
Okamoto Toyohiko (1773-1845), who was to greatly Shosoin. He was also commissioned to paint doors
infuence his painting style. Zeshin also for some years in the apartments of the Imperial palace. In 1876
worked with and taught the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa he was made an examiner for the newly established
Kuniyoshi (1797-1862). In 1840 Zeshin became Kangyoryo [Bureau for Industrial Promotion under
highly acclaimed with his painting of the Ibaraki- the Ministry for Home Affairs]. In the following year
doji, a female demon who had been terrorising people at the frst Domestic Industrial Exposition, Zeshin
by the Rashomon gate, escaping clutching her own won the Ryumon-sho [dragon prize] with a lacquer
demon arm which had been cut off by the Heian hero panel depicting a rustic hut in felds, which was bought
Watanabe no Tsuna. The vivid and frightening picture by the Imperial Household.
is said to have infuenced the later work of Kuniyoshi In 1891 Zeshin was appointed a Teishitsu Gigei-In
and others. [Imperial Artist], and became a professor of the
Zeshin became a prolifc painter of popular subjects University of Fine Arts in Tokyo together with his
and was hugely popular with the Edo townsfolk in Edo fellow Imperial Artist Kano Natsuo (1828-1898), with
period Japan. His light-hearted and vivid depictions of whom he collaborated on a number of joint works,
everyday Japan, its custom, and legends were among such as the tanto mounting with waves depicted in
the earliest art to fnd favour in the West after the seigaiha-nuri in the collection of the Nezu Institute,
Imperial Restoration. But it is as a lacquer artist that Tokyo. His pupil Ikeda Taishin (1825-1903) inherited
Zeshin is perhaps best known, and for which his art his style and was himself made an Imperial Artist
was acclaimed at the great expositions both in Japan some fve years following Zeshin’s death. During his
and overseas in his last decades. His diverse work last years he made a number of great pictorial plaques
encompassed the Shijo and Rinpa schools, and the using lacquer on wood, with all the lacquer skills he
Chinese-inspired work of Ogawa Haritsu, or Ritsuo had absorbed and devised. His frst major piece in this
(1663-1747). He introduced the technique of painting format was probably the prize-winning panel with
on paper with lacquer to give an impression of richness Mount Fuji viewed from Tagonoura, which was shown
and three-dimensionality. He created and perfected at the 1873 International Exposition in Vienna.
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