Two Aubergines | Shibata Zeshin 柴田是真 | 1807-1891

Shibata Zeshin is best known as a lacquer painter. From an artistic and technical perspective, this is a specifically Japanese craft that did not achieve comparable refinement in any other culture. The most brilliant artist of this genre is undoubtedly Shibata Zeshin. Prices for lacquerware by this artist reached dizzying heights as early as the late 19th century. He is represented with lacquerware in all major Asian art collections worldwide.

Zeshin came from a craft background; his father was a sculptor, and he began an apprenticeship with a lacquer master early on, later also studying with renowned painters such as Okamoto Toyohiko. Despite these studies, he always remained an artist of urushi-e, lacquer painting, which involves much more with technique and materials than conventional painting on paper or silk. This "lacquer origin" left its mark on many of his paintings on silk and paper: when Zeshin worked in color, his choice of colors was usually very clear, sometimes bordering on the garish – an effect that works well when painting on black lacquer.

In this ink painting, it is striking that the two eggplants are very intensely black (almost like a compact lacquer application) – no shading reveals their spherical shape. However, the sepals and stem of one eggplant are fleetingly painted with watery, pale ink. Therefore, one feels here that Zeshin is playing with the material of the image base. He seems to have intentionally chosen a relatively rough silk, so that these sepals of the fruits can have their own texture with quick brushstrokes and little ink. The silk thus asserts itself conspicuously here with its somewhat unusually coarser structure. Zeshin almost extremely enjoys this textile effect in his signature. It almost looks as if he did not sign with a brush, but with a grainy chalk stick.