Studio: international art (72.1918)

Studio-Talk

CHA-IRE (TEA-CADDIES)

(i) Tokunaga Katatsuki eha-ire {22,200 yen); (2) Yamagara
cha-ire (44,300 yen); (3) Rikyu Jizo cha-ire (77,000 yen)

{Sold at the sale of Mr. AkaboshPs collection in Tokyo)

TOKYO.—All art sales records in

Japan were broken at the recent
dispersal of Mr. Akaboshi's collec-
tion at the Tokyo Fine Art Club.
It contained three hundred items, consisting
of Japanese and Chinese paintings, calligraphs,
lacquer wares and utensils for cha-no-yu,
and realized the enormous sum of 3,930,000
yen (about £393,000). It was unprecedented
also in the great number of masterpieces
it contained. The highest price was paid
for a kakemono (hanging picture) of a snow
landscape by Ryokai, an eminent Chinese
artist who attained a wonderful mastery in the
art of painting with a few brush-strokes, though
capable of most minute details as shown in his
Buddhistic paintings. This snow landscape
brought 210,000 yen (about £21,000) the largest
sum ever paid for a single painting in Japan.
The painting inspired a sense of awe, as Ryokai
in his simple and impressionistic style con-

veyed with consummate skill the
dreariness and severity of the winter
landscape. It awakened in us our
reverence for nature, giving us a
proper sense of proportion between
man and nature.

The next highest sum paid for a
kakemono was for Zenshin Ryu
(dragon showing the entire body),
by Kano-Motonobu, one of the
greatest painters Japan has ever
produced, and who died three hun-
dred and fifty-seven years ago at
the age of eighty-four. It is painted
wholly in black, and depicts the
dragon about to dart through space. The
merit of the drawing is in the ethereal quality
of the dragon, the strange imaginary creature
that can fly across the sky or hide in the
earth or under water as it lists. The fa-
vourite way with our artists is to show only
a small portion of the dragon, covering the
rest with clouds. It is difficult to draw the
entire length of the body and yet to give an
ethereal quality to the dragon, though this
difficulty was overcome by Motonobu in the
kakemono in question, which brought 105,000
yen. Among other works by Motonobu in-
cluded in the sale may be mentioned a landscape,
also in black, which was sold for 36,000 yen.
This landscape, of which a reproduction is given
on page 165, has a big waterfall in the distance.
There is a dignity in the unaffected use of the
brush ; with lines apparently carelessly drawn,
the artist has given the essentials, imbued with
life and vigour.

(l) WATER-JAR, SETO WARE (4IO YEN); (2) PORCELAIN WATER-JAR (lOOO YEN); (3) PORCELAIN WATER-JAR

BY NINSEI (2180 YEN)

(Sold at Mr. Akaboshi's sale in Tokyo)

166