Lot 64: Shimomura Kanzan (1873-1930)

Shimomura Kanzan (1873-1930)
Pine and plum trees
Signed Kanzan and sealed Soshin
Three screens: sliding doors mounted as a pair of four-panel screens and one two-panel screen; ink, silver, gold and silver leaf on paper
Four panel screens: 64 x 204¼in. (162.5 x 519cm.) each; two-panel screen: 65 5/8 x 67¾in. (166.8 x 172cm.) (3)

By repute:
Baron Iwasaki Yanosuke (1851-1908), Tokyo
Iwasaki Koyata (1879-1945), Tokyo
Sold by the Iwasaki family, 1966

Said to have been conceived as sliding doors (fusuma) enclosing a room in the home of one of Japan's first industrialists, the paintings of pine and plum of late winter-early spring are now preserved as three folding screens.

It is claimed that Iwasaki Yanosuke, younger brother of the founder of the Mitsubishi conglomerate and its second president, commissioned these screens. Around 1869, Yanosuke had gone to New York to study English. He returned to Osaka to join his brother's business venture, helping to modernize the company. As president of Mitsubishi from 1885 until 1893 he diversified and expanded into Tokyo. The sliding door paintings by Kanzan were purportedly for his home in Takanawa, a suburb of Tokyo, where he had houses in both Western and Japanese styles. The painted doors evidently passed on to his eldest son, Iwasaki Koyata, who became the fourth and last president of Mitsubishi. The paintings were damaged during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. The ten surviving panels were restored by the artist, who remounted them for Koyata as folding screens.

In 1938, the ownership of the Iwasaki house in Tokyo was transferred to the Mitsubishi Estate Corporation, but the paintings by Kanzan were kept by the family and moved to Koyata's home on Toriizaka in Roppongi in Tokyo (now the location of the International House of Japan). In 1944, they were moved to the Iwasaki summer house in Atami to prevent damage during the war.

Kanzan, a Nihonga painter, is recognized for his contribution to the revival and reinterpretation of traditional Japanese subjects and techniques. He was a classmate of Yokoyama Taikan in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and taught there until 1908, with a hiatus of several years spent studying watercolor painting in Europe. Kanzan's patrons were mostly members of the social elite and included the imperial household.