Shibata Zeshin
Shibata Zeshin (柴田 是真, March 15, 1807 – July 13, 1891) was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era.
Koma Kansai decided that his young charge would need to learn to sketch, paint, and create original designs in order to become a great lacquerer.
Shibata then took on yet another artist's name, abandoning Junzo and signing his works "Reisai," using the Rei from Suzuki Nanrei, and the sai from Koma Kansai.
The name has a meaning similar to "this is true" or "the Truth", a reference to an old Chinese tale of a king who held an audience with a great number of painters.
Zeshin learned not only the basics of painting and sketching, but also Japanese tea ceremony, haiku and waka poetry, history, literature and philosophy.
The great ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi was impressed with these fan paintings and, approaching the young painter, began a friendship which would last for many years.
Though Japanese masters (sensei) are often quite egotistical and arrogant before their students, one of Zeshin's teachers is reputed to have made the comment that "just as you cannot appreciate the size of Mt.
In the 1830s and 1840s, Japan suffered an economic crisis, and artists were strictly limited, by law, in their use of silver and gold, both nearly essential for traditional styles of lacquer decoration.
Zeshin compensated by using bronze to simulate the look and texture of iron, and with a variety of other substances and decorative styles to keep his work beautiful, while remaining traditional and doable.
[2] One year before his death in 1891, Zeshin was granted the immense honor of membership in the newly created Imperial Art Committee and is today the only artist who has been recognized in 2 fields (painting and maki-e) of work.
Zeshin remains, in fact, the only artist to be successful in the medium of urushi-e, as it requires specially treated paper, and a very particular consistency of lacquer to be used as paint.
There is a decorative tsuba (sword handguard) made by him on which an ant, displayed in relief in lacquer, is carrying away the "shin" character (真) of Zeshin's signature to the other side of the piece.
