A LACQUER PANEL BY IKEDA TAISHIN (1825–1903)

Japan, 19th century

A rectangular lacquer panel depicting the Meoto Iwa, or ‘Wedded Rocks’, at Futamigaura in Ise, with Mount Fuji appearing on the distant horizon. The landscape is worked in gold and silver hiramaki-e and takamaki-e on a nashiji ground. Signed Taishin (泰真) and bearing a double-gourd-shaped seal at the lower left.

The subject belongs to the Japanese tradition of meisho-e, or ‘pictures of famous places’, depicting landscapes celebrated for their scenery and religious or literary associations. The Meoto Iwa feature in Edo-period prints by artists including Utagawa Hiroshige and Kitagawa Utamaro, reflecting their established place in Japanese landscape imagery. Here, Taishin interprets the coastal view through gold and silver lacquer, combining flat and raised maki-e. A useful comparison is his lacquer panel depicting Enoshima, dated 1893, now in the Tokyo National Museum. Exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair that year, it similarly employs gold and silver raised lacquer to render a celebrated coastal landscape.

Ikeda Taishin was a leading pupil and close associate of Shibata Zeshin (1807–1891), studying lacquer decoration and painting in his studio for more than twenty years before establishing an independent career. Their collaboration continued thereafter, as demonstrated by a lacquer box dated 1862 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, decorated by both artists. Following Zeshin’s appointment as an Imperial Household Artist in 1890, Taishin received the same distinction in 1896 and undertook commissions for the Imperial Household Ministry.