.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
A WOOD SCULPTURE OF A STANDING FEMALE SHINTO DEITY by Julia Meech
This statue is one of a “group” of eighteen distinctive wood figures of Shinto deities (shinzo). They are unusual for their tall, attenuated bodies; the fact that they are all standing; and that they are made of rare woods. The group is said to have come from a shrine in Izumo. They passed through the hands of a few dealers in Tokyo and are now located in museums and private collections primarily in the United States, but with five in Japan, one in Canada, and one in the UK.
Two were published in Japan in 1930 in an illustrated catalogue of an exhibition of Shinto statues. One, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, was acquired by an American collector at least as early as 1948. Recently, wood samples were taken of twelve of the statues and all proved to be rare wood choices. Instead of cypress, the principal material for religious icons in Japan, ten – including this Josefowitz statue – are magnolia; the other two are chestnut and a species of prunus. Four have been radiocarbon dated to the Heian period, between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Carved from a single block of magnolia wood, the underside of the Josefowitz statue shows that it must have come from a quarter of a log of about 45 cm diameter and one meter high.
The Tokyo dealer Hiroshi Hirota, of Kochukyo Gallery in Nihonbashi, sold this statue to Sam Josefowitz in 1964. Many others in the group were sold by Jun’kichi Mayuyama, another prominent Tokyo dealer in the 1960s. Mayuyama published the pieces he sold in his 1966 book Japanese Art in the West. For example, he sold one Shinto figure from this group in 1960 and two more in 1964 to the Honolulu Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art acquired one from him in 1954; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1965.
A female deity nearly identical to the Josefowitz statue is in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (957.228), published by Mayuyama in 1966 in Japanese Art in the West; it, too, is made of magnolia wood and radiocarbon dated to the early 12th century. Another very similar female deity is in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (B69S36): all three figures wear formal, courtly gowns, their hands joined together under long sleeves and their hair parted in the middle, with a double topknot.
Shiro Ito, the former director of the Wakayama Prefectural Museum, and a shinzo scholar, is working on the iconography of the figures in this group. The identities of the figures remain under investigation, although Sinéad Vilbar tentatively identified the standing figure of a young boy in the Princeton University Art Museum – the one statue made of chestnut – as a Shinto deity, Hachiman Wakamiya (S. Vilbar & K. Gray Carr, Shinto: The Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019, pl. 69).
This statue is one of a “group” of eighteen distinctive wood figures of Shinto deities (shinzo). They are unusual for their tall, attenuated bodies; the fact that they are all standing; and that they are made of rare woods. The group is said to have come from a shrine in Izumo. They passed through the hands of a few dealers in Tokyo and are now located in museums and private collections primarily in the United States, but with five in Japan, one in Canada, and one in the UK.
Two were published in Japan in 1930 in an illustrated catalogue of an exhibition of Shinto statues. One, in the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, was acquired by an American collector at least as early as 1948. Recently, wood samples were taken of twelve of the statues and all proved to be rare wood choices. Instead of cypress, the principal material for religious icons in Japan, ten – including this Josefowitz statue – are magnolia; the other two are chestnut and a species of prunus. Four have been radiocarbon dated to the Heian period, between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Carved from a single block of magnolia wood, the underside of the Josefowitz statue shows that it must have come from a quarter of a log of about 45 cm diameter and one meter high.
The Tokyo dealer Hiroshi Hirota, of Kochukyo Gallery in Nihonbashi, sold this statue to Sam Josefowitz in 1964. Many others in the group were sold by Jun’kichi Mayuyama, another prominent Tokyo dealer in the 1960s. Mayuyama published the pieces he sold in his 1966 book Japanese Art in the West. For example, he sold one Shinto figure from this group in 1960 and two more in 1964 to the Honolulu Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art acquired one from him in 1954; the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1965.
A female deity nearly identical to the Josefowitz statue is in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (957.228), published by Mayuyama in 1966 in Japanese Art in the West; it, too, is made of magnolia wood and radiocarbon dated to the early 12th century. Another very similar female deity is in the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (B69S36): all three figures wear formal, courtly gowns, their hands joined together under long sleeves and their hair parted in the middle, with a double topknot.
Shiro Ito, the former director of the Wakayama Prefectural Museum, and a shinzo scholar, is working on the iconography of the figures in this group. The identities of the figures remain under investigation, although Sinéad Vilbar tentatively identified the standing figure of a young boy in the Princeton University Art Museum – the one statue made of chestnut – as a Shinto deity, Hachiman Wakamiya (S. Vilbar & K. Gray Carr, Shinto: The Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, 2019, pl. 69).