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Lot 46: Poems from theShinkokinwakashu(New collection of Japanese poems from ancient and modern times) with design of plants

Est: $400,000 USD - $500,000 USD
Christie'sNew York, NY, USApril 22, 2015

Item Overview

Description

Hon'ami Koetsu (1558-1637) Poems from the Shinkokinwakashu (New collection of Japanese poems from ancient and modern times) with design of plants Paper by Kamishi Soji and sealed Handscroll; ink, silver, gold and flecks of gold leaf on paper 12 ¾ x 373 3/8 in. (32.4 x 949.2 cm.) With wood box titled Koetsu makimono (handscroll by Koetsu) and a paper certificate of authentication (kiwame fuda) by Kanda Doki (1710-1773)

Dimensions

32.4 x 949.2 cm.

Artist or Maker

Exhibited

Idemitsu Museum of Arts, Tokyo, “Moji no chikara, sho no chikara II—sho to kaiga no taiwa / Power of Characters, Power of Calligraphy II—A Dialogue between Calligraphy and Painting,” July–September, 2013

Literature

Asahi Shinbun, ed., Koetsu sho Sotatsu kingin dei-e (Koetsu’s calligraphy, Sotatsu’s gold and silver pictures) (Tokyo: Kokkasha, 1978), no. 5. Idemitsu Museum of Arts, ed., Moji no chikara, sho no chikara II—sho to kaiga no taiwa / Power of Characters, Power of Calligraphy II—A Dialogue between Calligraphy and Painting (Tokyo: Idemitsu Museum of Arts, 2013), no. 20.

Provenance

Private collection, Japan

Notes

Koetsu, a wealthy artist-craftsman, was a member of the cultured elite of Kyoto and regarded as one of the three finest calligraphers of his day. The eldest son of a sword connoisseur, Koetsu no doubt owed much of his aesthetic sensitivity and disciplined eye to his family profession. His innovative writing style led his own contemporaries to consider him a genius, and he was honored even by the shogunate. In 1615, Ieyasu presented him a tract of land at Takagamine in the hills on the northwestern edge of Kyoto. There, Koetsu presided over a village of like-minded, free-spirited craftsmen. As a devotee of the classical courtly tradition, Koetsu transcribed many early waka poems and preferred above all the melancholy autumn poems from the eighth (and best) imperial poetry anthology, the Shinkokinwakashu, sponsored by the then-retired emperor Go-Toba (1180- 1239) in the early thirteenth century. The poems were compiled by the most famous poets of the Kamakura period, notably Fujiwara Teika, Fujiwara Ariie, Fujiwara Ietaka and others. The anthology includes poets going back to the eighth century but also contemporary masters from the early thirteenth century. From among the over one thousand intricately interwoven waka of that anthology, Koetsu has here selected 32 consecutive poems. The scroll is composed of ten sheets of paper with luxurious under-decorations in gold pigment and sprinkled flakes of gold leaf and with gold and silver plant motifs imprinted by stamping. The inspiration for the perfect harmony of poetry, calligraphy and exquisite paper decoration is found in eleventh and twelfth-century anthologies, but the designs favored by Koetsu are much bolder and more modern. Although Koetsu occasionally contributed some of his own paintings or designs, several of his most famous poem scrolls with gold and silver underpainting (the Deer Scroll with poems from the Shinkokinwakashu in the Seattle Art Museum, for example) bear the “Inen” seal associated with Tawaraya Sotatsu (d. 1640), a somewhat shadowy figure who must have worked in close collaboration with the calligrapher. As this scroll unrolls from right to left, an ever-changing sequence of plants is revealed, beginning with wire grass (ohijiwa); delicate ferns (shinobugusa) set in a “landscape” of gentle golden hillocks; Chinese black pine (maki); a repeat of grasses; wisteria hanging dramatically from the top edge of the paper, as though from an arbor; and, finally, a repeat of ferns. The reverse of the scroll is decorated with butterflies printed in gold and silver and has several seals of Kamishi Soji (dates unknown), a papermaker who often collaborated with Koetsu and Sotatsu. “Kamishi” (paper master) is the name for a supplier of paper and mounter of scrolls, in this case the papermaker Soji. Soji lived across the street from Koetsu in Takagamine. An identical printed butterfly design appears on the reverse of a handscroll by Koetsu dated 1616 (Genna 2) with poems from the Shinkokinwakashu from the Burke Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Describing the Burke scroll, Miyeko Murase noted that some stamps or carved blocks, probably made of wood, “were employed repeatedly throughout the scroll, in different combinations, thus allowing for a variety of designs with a limited number of blocks” (Murase, Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art [New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000], 214). With deceptive simplicity, kana of the Japanese syllabary and Chinese characters are scattered across the paper in interplay of dark, heavy accents (usually the larger, more complex Chinese characters) and smaller, lighter, more fluid elements, including exaggerated vertical elongations of kana. Scholars speculate that the scroll offered here probably dates from the Genna era (1615–23).

Auction Details

An Inquiring Mind: American Collecting of Japanese and Korean Art

by
Christie's
April 22, 2015, 10:00 AM EST

20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY, NY 10020, US