September 2020

Color woodblock print: hosoban, 12⅞ x 6 in. (32.7 x 15.2 cm); 1774

Signed: Shunshō ga

Published: Narazaki, Muneshige, et al. 1976. Shunshō. Vol. 3, Ukiyo-e taikei (Encyclopedia of Ukiyo-e). Tokyo: Shūeisha, pl. 26

Shibaraku (Stop right there!) scenes entered the Kabuki repertoire at the end of the seventeenth century. This scene portrays the ultimate confrontation between good and evil and was named after the shout that preceded the super-hero’s entrance on the hanamichi—literally the “flower path,” a raised passage that joined the stage on the audience’s left and passed through the auditorium. In oversize persimmon-colored robes emblazoned with his crest, his face painted in red kumadori makeup to represent his hot-blooded but essentially good character, and with his giant sword in hand, the hero would declaim and posture as he advanced slowly toward the stage, where he would halt whatever crime was being committed. A favorite with the audience, these larger-than-life figures became stock roles for Ichikawa-lineage actors and allowed them to showcase the aragoto (rough-housing) theatrical style for which the Edo Kabuki stage became famous. First performed by Danjūrō I (1660–1704) in 1697, by the eighteenth century, playwrights had introduced all kinds of variations on the theme, and the scene had become obligatory during the opening-of-the-season (kaomise) productions that each theater held in the eleventh month of the year.

Color woodblock print: ōban tate-e, 14⅞ x 9¾ in. (32.7 x 22.5 cm); 1793–94

Signed: Shunchō ga

Publisher: Tsuruya Kiemon

Provenance: Heinrich Tiedemann; Walter von Scheven

Shunchō had an active career that was relatively short. He graduated from the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō around 1780, but not liking theater prints, the main staple of the Katsukawa School, he was quickly drawn to the tall, slender figures portrayed by Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815). Shunchō’s woodblock prints, especially his triptychs from the mid-1780s in the Kiyonaga style, are justly famous. Together with the publisher Tsuruya Kiemon in the early 1790s, Shunchō produced numerous large-head portraits of courtesans, geisha, and leading beauties, often set against yellow backgrounds, such as the present example.

Color woodblock-printed album with highlights in mica, metallic pigments, embossing and mother-of-pearl; orihon, hand-painted indigo covers with original title slip Shiohi no tsuto black-on-buff paper; one vol. complete, 9¾ x 7⅜ in. (24.8 x 18.7 cm), comprising one sheet preface; one sheet landscape; six sheets poems and detailed images of shells; one sheet interior view; one sheet postscript and colophon; undated [1789].

Contents: Preface by Akera Kankō (1740–1800) describes how he and seven companions from the Yaegaki poetry circle set out by boat on an alcohol-fueled excursion to visit the Bay of Shinagawa, just to the south of Edo, where they enjoyed beachcombing and extemporizing verse on the treasures they discovered there. A view of the beach at Shinagawa follows, with a courtesan and her companions in the foreground to the left; on the right and in the distance, people are gathering shells. A verse by Yomibito Shirazu is at upper right. Next are six sheets, each with six poems in the upper portion, and detailed views of shells, rocks, and seaweed below. An interior scene completes the sequence of images, with upper-class women playing the shell game, and a verse by Matake no Fushikabe above.

Color woodblock print: ōban tate-e, 15¼ x 10 in. (38.7 x 25.4 cm); 1794

Series: Array of Supreme Portraits of the Present Day (Tōji zensei nigao-zoro-e)

Signed: Utamaro hitsu

Publisher: Wakasaya Yoichi

Provenance: Charles Haviland (1832–1896), sold Estampes Japonaises (first sale), Hotel Drouot, Paris, 1922, lot 291
Andre Spoerry (1891–1940), and by descent
Private American Collection

This print belongs to a set of ten depicting three-quarter length views of the high-ranking courtesans of the Yoshiwara. The series is discussed in Asano and Clark, where the authors note that this is the only known impression of the first edition, before the title of the series was changed. The first state of six prints of the set employed this series title before it was altered. The authors speculate that the change was made because these are not specific portraits, but rather types of beauties. The series title of the last four prints of the set, and the second edition of the first six prints, was then changed to read Array of Supreme Beauties of the Present Day (Tōji zensei bijin-zoro-e).

Color woodblock print: ōban tate-e, 15⅜ x 10⅜ in. (38.7 x 25.4 cm); 1795–96

Series: Untitled series of double half-length portraits

Signed: Toyokuni ga

Publisher: Den

Toyokuni was the leading theater print designer and book illustrator at the turn of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The son of a puppet or doll maker, he entered the school of a neighbor, the ukiyo-e painter and landscapist Utagawa Toyoharu (1735−1814), from whom he received his family name Utagawa. From the start, Toyokuni displayed a mastery of the brush and exceptional technical skill.  By mid-1790s, as the star of the Katsukawa School was beginning to fade, his own brand of sharp and incisive theatre portraiture emerged. The new style is best exemplified by his series of actor prints for the publisher Izumiya Ichibei entitled Yakusha butai no sugata-e (A Pictorial Almanac of Actors on the Stage), in which he combined realistic portraits of his subjects in the manner of Tōshūsai Sharaku (act. 1794–95) with the exaggeratedly elongated figures popularized by Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815) and Hosoda Eishi (1756–1829). This series, as well as an extended group of ōkubi-e actor portraits published by Uemura Yōhei and prints from the present series, are the works his reputation rests on today.

Hanging scroll: ink and color on silk; 43⅛ x 19¼ in. (109.5 x 48.9 cm); dated Hōreki 10 (1760)

Signed: Shachōkō; sealed: Kaidai ni chiki sonsureba (and yet, while China holds our friendship) and Tansei shite rō ni itaran to suru wo shirazu (I don’t think about getting old as I paint)

Inscription: Konoetatsu [kōshin] no haru ni Heianjō [no] sumi [ni aru] Sanka-ken [no] naka [ni] utsu[shita] (Painted in the spring of 1760, at Sanka-ken in the corner of Heianjō (Kyoto))

Published: Sakaki Johei, et al. 2001. Buson: sono futatsu no tabi (Buson: his two journeys). Exh. cat. Tokyo and Osaka: Asahi Newspaper Company in association with the Edo/Tokyo Museum and the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, no. 38, p. 78

Unlike Gion Nankai (1676−1751) and Yanagisawa Kien (1704−1758), both early practitioners of Nanga (Southern pictures, from their Chinese designation), the poet-painter Yosa Buson was of humble birth and had no claim to the rank of scholar-official. Nevertheless, he educated himself about Chinese learning and literary traditions, and combined this knowledge with his own poetic sensibility to develop one of the most lyrical and moving bodies of work in the corpus of Nanga painting. Many of his early years were spent studying, writing poetry, and traveling, and it was not until he was well into middle age that he evolved his own, unique painting style.

Hanging scroll: ink and color on silk; 39⅛ x 13¾ in. (99.5 x 34.9 cm); Meiji era (1868–1912), 1883

Signed: Joku Nyūdo Kyōsai zu

Sealed: Bankoku tobu (Flying over many lands)

Provenance: Josiah Conder

Published: Conder, Josiah. 1911. Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyosai: An Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Studies and Sketches, by the Above Artist, with Explanatory Notes on the Principles, Materials and Technique, of Japanese Painting. Tokyo, Yokohama, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore: The Maruzen Kabushiki Kaisha, Kelly and Walsh, Ltd. , no. 51, Pl. XII.
Winkel and Magnussen, Copenhagen. 1942. Doktor Josiah Conder’s Samling Af Japansk Kunst. Auct. cat. Jun 1st–3rd, 1942, lot 149.
Kawanabe Kusumi et al. 2015. Gaki Kyōsai/Kyosai: Master painter and his student Josiah Conder. Exh. cat. Tokyo: Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Kawanabe Kyosai Memorial Museum Foundation. No. 48, p. 67.

Crows are a signature subject of the great nineteenth century painter Kawanabe Kyōsai, and the Conder Two Crows on a Branch Overlooking Asakusa at Dawn is one of the most famous examples. Conder himself commented on the painting on page 106 of his book cited above:

Hanging scroll: ink, color, and gold pigment on silk

Edo period, Bunka era, ca. 1810–12

36¼ x 13¼ in. (92.0 x 33.6 cm)

Signed: Utagawa Toyokuni ga

Sealed: Ichiyōsai

Provenance: Itō Shinsui (1898–1972)

Published: Takahashi Seiichirō, et al. 1964. Orimpiku Tokyo taikai kinen nikuhitsu ukiyo-e meisaku ten/The exhibition of ukiyo-e hand-paintings in commemoration of the Tokyo Olympics. Exh. Cat. (Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbunsha), no. 123.
Asano Shūgō, et al. 2015. Nikuhitsu Ukiyo-e no Sekai/Ukiyo-e Paintings. Exh. Cat. (Fukuoka: Fukuoka City Museum, Nishi Nihon Shimbunsha), no. 86.

Any skilled ukiyo-e painter had the ability to communicate his personality through the precision of his draftsmanship, which, combined with his sense of style and élan, evolved as his life progressed. The natural trajectory of a painter’s career, from his youthful beginnings as a student completing illustrations for cheap books and ephemera, to his celebrated maturity, meant that commissions for expensive paintings tended to become more numerous towards the end of his life, after commercial success had been achieved. At the time that this painting was made, Toyokuni was the head of the dominant ukiyo-e school of the period. His great actor prints of the 1790s were behind him, and the artist concentrated on commissions for fine paintings, and on teaching his many students.   

Hizen ware, Nabeshima type: porcelain with underglaze blue and colored enamel decoration

Edo period, Empō/Jōkyō eras (1673−87)

Diameter: 7⅝ in. (19.3 cm)

With its shallow, flat surface and slightly raised rim, this masterpiece of Japanese seventeenth-century design dates from the earliest period of porcelain manufacture at the Ōkawachi kilns, patronized exclusively by the Nabeshima family, lords of the Saga domain in Hizen province. This kiln was founded in 1675 according to official documents but is considered by modern scholars to have been in operation some years earlier. 

Hizen ware, Nabeshima type: porcelain with underglaze blue, and over-glazed iron-red and colored enamel decoration

Edo period, Hōei/Shōtoku eras (1704−16)

Diameter: 7¾ in. (19.7 cm)

Provenance: James Alexander Scrymser (1839−1918), acquired in Japan in either 1898 or 1899, and thence by descent

Nabeshima wares were made only for domestic consumption, and for presentation purposes rather than for actual use. The dishes were produced in three basic sizes, the two smaller ones in sets of twenty or thirty, with a single larger serving dish to match. With occasional variants, these were decorated in three ways: underglaze blue and white; underglaze blue and white with celadon glaze; and underglaze blue and colored enamels. Great efforts were expended on quality control and many dishes were fired and discarded as substandard. The designs were outlined in underglaze blue and then repainted in over-glaze colored enamels and iron-red, in an imitation of Chinese doucai (joined colors) wares first developed in the fifteenth century. The dishes were for official use of the Nabeshima daimyo and their retainers, or for presentation to the Tokugawa shogunate, and could not be commercially bought and sold during the Edo period (1615−1867).

Hizen ware, Nabeshima type: porcelain with underglaze blue decoration

Edo period, Genroku era (1688–1704)

Each 2¼ in. (5.7 cm) high