Important Japanese Color Woodblock Triptych of the Imperial Family

This refined object dates to the first half of the 19th century, and was probably used for obi, kimono sashes, which were hung over it. The gold decorations on the black-lacquered g...

This lacquered 18th century Edo period altar table was probably made for the private shrine of an aristocratic home. There, it would have been placed before an image of a deity, and ...

This Chinese standing screen has a main panel, and a lower panel flanked by two smaller ones, which were made in the 19th century as fretwork window panels for a house. In the 20th century they were salvaged, assembled, and mounted in a matching hardwood stand as a freestanding screen...

This Mughal miniature was painted at one of the princely courts of India. It depicts a raven-haired princess in a gold-trimmed saffron-colored silk sari. Under a glowering evening sky she dawdles on a white marble terrace, with a pet fawn on a leash, before a landscape dotted with buildings nestled amongst trees beyond a river. Her hair, falling loosely about her shoulders, rather than carefully dressed on her head, indicates that she is a maiden. The overall mood is one of expectancy. Perhaps walking a pet and catching an evening breeze is a pretext to escape palace scrutiny for a lovers’ assignation. In Mughal India tender sentiments were a bridge to the erotic – and if this seems contradictory, so too is the balance of realism and caricature, and naturalism with the schematic. Both are hallmarks of miniatures painted in this place and time. The earliest Mughal Indian miniatures date to the 16th century. They were inspired by those painted at the refined Moslem courts of the neighboring Persian empire. They incorporated figures in spite of the Moslem faith’s proscription against depicting the human form. Such was the nature of sophisticated courtly life everywhere that beauty and pleasure trumped systems of morality. This was no less the case at the provincial Indian courts, where our miniature, marked by a charming pictorial naiveté, was most likely painted. Yet the artist was undeniably accomplished. His command of perspective, introduced by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, is seen in the landscape, which rolls back to a distant horizon, contrary to the flat two-dimensional ones following Indian-painting traditions. And if Mughal artists were influenced by Western art, the compliment was returned by Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds, among others, who collected Indian miniatures (as did, perhaps, Giovanni Bellini who painted in Mughal style the famous miniature of a Persian man...

Print Toyohara Chikanobu Japan Woodcut 1880

A Classic image by renowned Japanese printmaker Utagawa Toyonobu from his newly selected history of Toyotomi Hideyoshi series. A very good impres...

Antique Edo Period 19th c Woodblock Print - Kunisada Triptych The Little Princess Visits the Shrine  

A Japanese ukiyo-e triptych, this framed Kabuki theater woodblock print captures the energy and drama of Edo-period performance. The scene unfolds across three panels, each meticulou...