LONDON.- Bonhams will hold the second of a series of sales from the Misumi Collection of Important Works of Lacquer Art and Paintings on Tuesday 10 November at its New Bond Street headquarters in London.

Last year’s white-glove sale of the first part of the collection achieved a total of £1,424,500, over four times the pre-sale estimate.

A selection of masterpieces by Shibata Zeshin – such as the depiction of a tiger from an album of 18 urushi-e (lacquer) paintings (above, estimate £15,000 - 20,000) will be offered as part of the forthcoming sale.

Shibata Zeshin
The lacquer artist Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891) was one of the most famous names of the late Edo and Meiji Era art world. He began his prolific and versatile career at 11-years old as an apprentice, but rapidly gained a reputation for the naturalistic style of painting that came into vogue with the arrival of European traders.

Zeshin lived in turbulent times. In 1867-8 the centuries-old government of the shoguns was swept away by a coalition of reformist samurai, and the youthful Emperor was installed as a European-style constitutional monarch ruling from Zeshin’s native city, which was renamed Tokyo. Japan’s new-found globalism was an inspiration to Zeshin, whose exposure to the formats and techniques of western art in the early years of the Meiji Era (1868-1912) had revolutionary artistic results, which are readily apparent in the works of the Misumi Collection. One of them was his development of urushi-e, paintings of wet lacquer applied to paper. This daring new method, so different from traditional maki-e (lacquer sprinkled with gold or silver powder as a decoration) was clearly intended to emulate oil painting on canvas.

It is at this time that Zeshin must have first seen framed oil paintings and was inspired to create a series of large scale lacquer panels with bold, unified compositions and lavish use of the many new maki-e techniques that he had invented over the decades. His first panel, a landscape of Mount Fuji, was exhibited at the Vienna World Exposition of 1873, a potent symbol of Japan’s determination to blend the traditional and the foreign and forge a new artistic identity. The cover lot for this year’s sale, a paulownia-wood door panel featuring an autumn maple-viewing scene (estimate £100,000-150,000), exemplifies this revolutionary development.

The leaders of the new government quickly recognized the soft-power potential of Japan’s traditional arts and crafts and frequently commissioned Zeshin to execute commissions for international exhibitions and the imperial palaces; in the year he died he was even named one of the first Teishitsu Gigeiin (Artist to the Imperial Household, a forerunner of today’s Living National Treasure).

While Zeshin was revered in his home country during his lifetime, in death, his fame was diminished by the tumultuous events of Japan’s break-neck modernisation. Fortunately his work never fell from favour with the American and European collectors whose fascination with him dates back to those first international expositions. It is mostly thanks to this foreign enthusiasm that Zeshin’s stock has now risen so dramatically in his own land.

Suzannah Yip, Bonhams Director of Japanese Art, comments: "We are honoured to have been entrusted with the dispersal of this remarkable collection of lacquer and painting by an artist whose work is so admired both inside and outside Japan. Last year’s sale of part one of the Misumi Collection was the undisputed highlight of ‘Asian Art Week in London’ and the upcoming auction underscores yet again Bonhams status as the leading global auction house for truly important Japanese art”