100 Years of Japanese Painting!

An exhibition and sale of antique Japanese landscape, animal, and topical paintings on traditional silk hanging scrolls, as well as one-of-kind highly decorative Art Deco-style floral and abstract paintings/designs by two renowned Kyoto kimono and fabric designers, Sasaki Seishichi (1844-1908) and works produced in the 1920’s-30’s by artisans at Okamoto Kimono Drapers.

Sasaki Seishichi (1844-1908) was a celebrated textile and fabric designer, and manufacturer of fine kimonos whose workshop was located in the Nishijin-ori district in Kyoto during the Meiji Period in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

Original paintings he produced as designs for ro-ui textiles and kimonos were exhibited in the International Exposition in Paris in 1890 where he was the grand prize winner. His designs were awarded the Silver Prize (posthumously) at the Tokyo Exposition Sengo Hatten Zenkoku Kogyo Hakuran-kai on August 20th, 1921.

Prior to the Paris Exposition in 1890, the paintings were mounted on handmade Arches stock. The sheets measure 68 x 45 cm. Some are stamped on the verso with the artist’s seal in vermilion, and many have his studio seal, a winged caduceus, stamped in black on the front lower margin of the mount. Several have notations in Japanese in the margins which appear to be instructions for craftsmen in the workshop of the artists who produced the finished fabrics and kimonos.