(Japanese, circa 1786-1860)

Catfish, circa 1805, unsigned, stamped verso "Berkshire Athenaeum", ink, watercolor and bodycolor on wove paper with "J. Whatman 1805",watermark,14-3/8 x 18-1/2 in.; fine leafed wood frame, 26-3/8 x 30-3/8 x 1-1/2 in.

Provenance: Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts (per stamp verso)

Note: Kawahara Keiga was the principal Japanese artist associated with the Dutch trading post at Dejima, Nagasaki, where he produced remarkably detailed studies of Japanese life, flora, and fauna. A student of the Nagasaki painter Ishizaki Yūshi (1768-1846), Keiga worked closely with the German physician and naturalist Philipp Franz von Siebold and the zoologist Heinrich Burger, who commissioned him to document Japan’s natural history.

Keiga painted fish from life, studying specimens collected from the seas and rivers of Japan. In 1831, Burger reported that Keiga had drawn approximately 400 species, with some 200 accompanied by descriptions and sent to Siebold in Europe. These studies, done on premium European and British papers such as J. Whatman, contributed to the monumental Fauna Japonica (1833-1850), published in Leiden.

The present study is unsigned and bears no inscription, as do a number of surviving works associated with Keiga’s natural history corpus. Keiga maintained a studio in Nagasaki where assistants also copied and adapted his compositions, making individual attributions difficult in the absence of signatures or inscriptions. Nevertheless, these works remain important records of the collaboration between Japanese artists and Western naturalists during the late Edo period.

The library previously owned albums of Asian natural history watercolors (depicting flora, fauna, and local scenes). These pieces have appeared in high end art auctions featuring the institutional Berkshire Athenaeum acquisition stamp or bookplate.