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Lot Essay
The Japanese 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. In 1891, Zeshin was appointed a Teishitsu Gigei-In [Imperial Artist], and became a professor of the University of Fine Arts in Tokyo.
Zeshin developed the technique of using lacquer as a painting medium which gives an impression of richness and three-dimensionality. The lacquer colours available to him at the time were limited to black, brown, vermillion, green and yellow and this colour palette, evident here in the current lot, can also be seen in the lacquer Zeshin painting, Grasshopper, in the New York's Metropolitan Museum's collection, accession no. 36.100.105, and in the ink, lacquer and gold painting, Cat and Silver Vine, by Zeshin, sold at Christie's New York, 22 March 2022, lot 35.
Zeshin developed the technique of using lacquer as a painting medium which gives an impression of richness and three-dimensionality. The lacquer colours available to him at the time were limited to black, brown, vermillion, green and yellow and this colour palette, evident here in the current lot, can also be seen in the lacquer Zeshin painting, Grasshopper, in the New York's Metropolitan Museum's collection, accession no. 36.100.105, and in the ink, lacquer and gold painting, Cat and Silver Vine, by Zeshin, sold at Christie's New York, 22 March 2022, lot 35.