Shibata Zeshin
Isaac Broome (designer)
Japanese, 1807 – 1891
American, 1835 – 1922
Three Crows in Flight; Two Egrets at Rest
Ott & Brewer (maker)
Japan, Meiji period (1868 – 1912), late 19th century Freestanding screen (tsuitate) remounted as a two-panel folding screen, colored lacquer and white pigment on gold leaf; each panel 60 7/8 x 39 ¼ in. (154.6 x 99.7 cm) Provenance: T. Richard Fishbein and Estelle P. Bender, New York, 2002 – 11. T. Richard Fishbein and Estelle P. Bender Collection, Gift of T. Richard Fishbein and Estelle P. Bender, 2011 (2011.572.3)
The two scenes on this brilliant gold two-panel folding screen — two white egrets opposite three jet-black crows — balance each other to mesmerizing effect. Shibata Zeshin is best known as a lacquer artist, but he was also a talented painter who experimented with lacquer as a primary medium, as seen here in the rendition of the crows.This screen has changed formats over the years: It was created as a freestanding screen (tsuitate) with the images on opposite sides.The two panels were then remounted as a pair of hanging scrolls, and finally they were rejoined in the present format, which is most effective for display and safe storage.This is one of three Edo paintings donated to the Museum by T. Richard Fishbein and Estelle P. Bender in 2011; an additional roster of paintings, forty-one in all, have also been promised in the coming years. JC
American, 1871 – 93
Pastoral Vase Trenton, New Jersey, ca. 1876 Tinted Parian porcelain, h. 18 in. (45.7 cm) Incised: I. Broome, stamped: Ott & Brewer Provenance: Possibly Robert Kersey, descendant of Isaac Broome; his widow, Frances Kersey; sale, Rago Arts and Auction House, Lambertville, New Jersey, June 11, 2011. Gift of Jacqueline Loewe Fowler, 2011 (2011.548)
When Jennie J.Young published her important critical assessment The Ceramic Art in 1879, she singled out Ott & Brewer’s Pastoral Vase as “partly suggested by mythology, partly original. It carries us back to the golden age of the poets.” The vase was likely part of the firm’s impressive display at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, which showcased a number of works by Isaac Broome, a sculptor hired to design the firm’s special exhibition pieces. Consistent with the principles of the Aesthetic Movement then in vogue, the vase is an amalgam of motifs, combining classical mythology (rams’ heads and a satyr playing a horn for a dancing girl) with Asian fretwork and naturalistic grapevines. Broome also designed the Faun’s Head Bracket on which the Pastoral Vase is nearly always shown in period images. (The Museum recently acquired a bracket as a promised gift
from Emma and Jay Lewis.) Broome’s designs were often fabricated in Parian, a kind of unglazed feldspathic porcelain so named to reference marble from the Greek island of Paros.The liquid clay was cast in a plaster mold, making it highly suitable for sculptural forms. Parian porce lain is typically ivory-colored, but it can also be tinted, in this case a deep blue-gray. ACF 1 8 7 5 – 19 0 0
63