A fine massive Japanese embroidery of a woodland riverscape 

拍品描述

A fine massive Japanese embroidery of a woodland riverscape Kyoto school, Meiji period Finely embroidered in muted tones of ochre, greens, greys and cream with a majestic river rushing through a mountainous woodland and fed by a small waterfall, the satin stitches carefully delineating each detail, 326cm x 184cm. Provenance: French private collection, acquired in France pre-1950, and thence by descent to the present owner. The present embroidery is a distinguished example of the shūchoku (art embroidery) produced by the Kyoto textile industry during the Meiji period (1868–1912), a moment of exceptional creative and commercial ambition in which Japanese textile makers achieved an unrivalled international reputation. At 326 by 184 cm, it is a work of remarkable scale, testament to the ambition of its original commission and the enormous expenditure of skilled labour that such densely worked embroidery required. The depiction of a rushing river threading through wooded hills, with a cascade at the margin, is characteristic of the Kyoto or Maruyama-Shijō school of painting (shasei), which sought to unite faithful naturalistic observation with a sense of animating vitality. The varied stitchwork, conveying the turbulence of moving water, the texture of bark and the differentiated foliage of the woodland, exemplifies the technically demanding vocabulary of Meiji embroidery, in which the needle served as a painter's brush and the result was conceived as a work of art rather than a furnishing textile. The restrained palette of golden ochre, russet and brown is equally consistent with Kyoto-school aesthetic sensibilities as applied to the export market. The leading textile manufacturers of the period were concentrated in Kyoto, home to the great workshops of Nishimura Sōzaemon XII of Chisō, Kawashima Jinbei II of the Kawashima Textile Company, and Iida Shinshichi III of Takashimaya. These firms produced embroideries for the Japanese imperial household, for diplomatic presentation, and in increasing quantities for the international market, where demand had been stimulated by a succession of great exhibitions. More than one-third of textile entries at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 came from Kyoto, and Japanese participation in the Paris Expositions from 1867 to 1900 reveals a sustained and strategically managed programme of cultural projection. Large-scale embroidered panels, wall hangings and folding screens were developed explicitly as formats suited to Western interiors and Western notions of fine art, objects that could be hung, framed and displayed as paintings. The present work, from a French collection and acquired before 1950, may plausibly have entered Europe through one of these great exhibition channels, though the precise circumstances of its acquisition remain unrecorded. Western audiences responded with exceptional enthusiasm. Commentators of the period placed Japanese embroiderers at the apex of the needle arts, admiring what they perceived as a profound harmony with the natural world expressed through extraordinary technical command. It is precisely this union of painterly conception and textile mastery that distinguishes the finest Meiji embroideries and that the present example embodies. Compare a signed embroidered woodland interior by Nishimura Sōzaemon of Kyoto, of closely related horizontal format and tonal palette, sold at Bonhams Skinner, Boston, 10–20 July 2023, lot 16; and a pair of embroidered panels depicting cascades in wooded mountain settings sold at Bonhams, London, 13 May 2025, lot 239.

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