SIGNED MEISEISAI, MEIJI PERIOD (LATE 19TH CENTURY)

Details

An ivory netsuke
Signed Meiseisai, Meiji Period (Late 19th Century)
Katabori, stained ivory; a standard representation of Fernao Mendes Pinto, the first Portuguese to reach Japan, shown in the usual manner as an exaggeratedly tall figure with a beard and whiskers wearing a Japanese-style tasselled and domed hat and a Chinese-style coat with cloud designs, a deer standing behind him, its stylised head pointing vertically upwards and visible to his left, no himotoshi, signed on the back of the coat Tenmon hachinen shichigatsu itsuka no torai Meiseisai, [Meiseisai, (a figure of the Portuguese who) arrived in Japan on the fifth day of the seventh month of the eighth year of Tenmon (=1539)]
13.0 x 3.7 cm. (5 1/8 x 1 7/16 in.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, Amsterdam, 25 October 1994, lot 662 (to Dreesmann).
Dr Anton C.R. Dreesmann (inventory no. E-40).

Special notice

Christie's charges a Buyer's premium calculated at 20.825% of the hammer price for each lot with a value up to €90,000. If the hammer price of a lot exceeds €90,000 then the premium for the lot is calculated at 20.825% of the first €90,000 plus 11.9% of any amount in excess of €90,000. Buyer's Premium is calculated on this basis for each lot individually.

Lot Essay

For another example of this well-known subject, see Neil K. Davey, Netsuke: A Comprehensive Study Based on the M.T. Hindson Collection , London: Faber & Faber, 1974, cat.no. 88. Davey's example gives the date 1543 and although the exact date of the Portuguese adventurer's arrival is uncertain, 1539 is definitely wrong; see Charles Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1951, p.23.

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