Pheasants in Cherry

1900–1914

Seifū Yohei III 三代清風与平

(Japanese, 1851–1914)

Culture

Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)

Medium

Porcelain with molded and carved design, underglaze color, and cream glaze

Measurements

height: 39 cm (15 3/8 in.); Diameter: 28.5 cm (11 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Dudley P. Allen Fund 2024.36

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Location

Not on view

Did You Know?

The unusually large scale of this piece and the fact that he signed the base “Made by Seifū of Great Japan” also suggest that it was made for public display.

Description

Like the design of Flower Vase with Phoenix in Paulownia (CMA 2022.199), the pair of pheasants in a dramatic landscape setting on this vase was created by adding clay to the surface of the clay body and then molding and carving it. Here, instead of a typical white clay, Yohei III has used an ivory clay. He then added gradated pink around the complex design, which with its multitude of cherry blossoms must have been painstaking to mask with precision. For the birds’ eyes, he added a touch of yellow. He then fired the vase with an allover translucent cream glaze. The resulting kanpakuji piece is one in which an academic subject long favored by painters of the Kano school for screen and sliding door paintings in important buildings, that of impressively sized birds within a scene of precipitous, angled rock faces and twisting trees, is made soft and ethereal while retaining a sense of gravitas.