Nette Megens
Head of Department, Director
Lot 109
An Arita model of a man or Benkei riding a carp, circa 1700
1 December 2025, 13:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£1,000 - £1,500
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An Arita model of a man or Benkei riding a carp, circa 1700
Modelled with the man dressed in a loosely flowing moulded fish scale, painted in underglaze-blue and picked out in polychrome enamels and gilding, the carp's tail pierced, 24.2cm long
Footnotes
Provenance
With Christophe Perlès, 2019
Literature
White, Mary, Beasts in the Whites' House, Vol.1, 2020, p.221
Another example of this model is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford, Gift of Gerald Reitlinger, EA1978.447, and another example in the Princessehof in Leeuwarden, on loan from the Ottema-Kingma Foundation, is illustrated by C.J.A. Jörg, Fine and Curious, Japanese Export Porcelain in Dutch Collections, 2003, p.274, no.359.
This object refers to a popular Japanese legend about the warrior Oniwakamaru, Benkei's childhood name. As a young boy, he avenged his mother's death by fighting and overpowering a giant carp that had swallowed her, and in art, he is often depicted riding the supernatural creature, wearing a red fighter's headband. Benkei's struggle is a popular and recurring scene in Japanese art. In porcelain, this scene is also depicted in an upright carp being held down by Benkei balancing on its tail.