Footnotes

• As Chelsea Foxwell has recently noted, framed tablets of this type, in several different media, 'arose to address international expectations and standards' due to the problem that the great international expositions of the later 19th century defined the fine arts as 'sculpture, oil painting, watercolor, drawing, and engraving', leaving no suitable category for the display of traditional Japanese hanging scrolls which were widely regarded in the West as sketches rather than fully finished paintings. As early as the Vienna Weltausstellung (World Exposition) of 1873—among of the first such events to include a significant Japanese component—framed Japanese pictures were exhibited alongside hanging scrolls (Foxwell 2015, pp. 56–58) and Zeshin, ever the willing collaborator of the reforming Meiji government, was more than happy to devise his own unique emulation of the classic Western framed oil painting. He produced several more exercises in this new format during the last two decades of his career, many of them depicting scenes from Japanese nature.
  
  Among Zeshin's surviving panels, the closest in style and feeling to this one is the Fuki ni kotori e gaku 蕗に小鳥絵額 (Panel with butterbur and small birds) in Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art, also dating from 1877 and shown at the first Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai (National Industrial Exhibition); see Tōkyō Kokuritsu Bunkazai Kenkyūjo (Tokyo National Research Institution of Cultural Properties), no. I-454. The Ishikawa panel is reproduced alongside the present lot in Tōkyō Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan (Tokyo National Museum) 2004, cat. no. I-102 and Nezu Bijutsukan (Nezu Museum) 2012, cat. no. 51; both publications (cat. no. I-99 and cat. no. 53) also feature the Setchū Sano zu maki-e gaku 雪中佐野図蒔絵額 (Panel with Design of Farmhouse in the Snow at Sano), sold in these rooms in 2014 (see Bonhams 2014, lot 14). Of similar size and proportions (46 × 67.5 cm) to the present lot, the Ishikawa panel shares its subdued palette (although with some limited use of gold takamaki-e) and focuses on a single intimate and atmospheric scene from nature. A lacquer tray by Zeshin with a very similar design is in the Florence and Herbert Irving collection, New York; see Gōke 1981, black-and-white plate 2.
  
  For further commentary on this remarkable example of Zeshin's most atmospheric manner, see the Collector's Introduction, pages 4-5.

Saleroom notices

• Please note that this lot has been withdrawn.