SHIBATA ZESHIN (1807-1891)

The long-lived lacquer artist Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891) was one of the elite group of craftsmen schooled in the fashions of the Edo period who made the great leap from the dictates of the feudal society into the Age of Enlightenment and Westernization in Japan in the Meiji era (1868 -1912). He was apprenticed at the age of eleven to the great inro artist Koma Kansai II (1767-1835) from whom he learned the traditional techniques of makie. He developed the technique of using lacquer as a painting medium which gives an impression of richness and three-dimensionality. The lacquer painting of Grasshopper in the collection of Metropolitan Museum, shows Zeshin’s skillful brushwork and various texture with lacquer (fig. 1.)
In 1891 Zeshin was appointed a Teishitsu Gigei-In [Imperial Artist], and became a professor of the University of Fine Arts in Tokyo together with his fellow Imperial Artist Kano Natsuo (1828-1898).