(Japanese, circa 1786-1860)

Catfish (silurus), unsigned, inscribed below with Latin, possibly Dutch and shorthand Japanese, ink, watercolor and bodycolor on two joined sheets of wove paper lacking watermark, 12-1/2 x 17-7/8 in.; fine leafed wood frame, 26-3/8 x 30-3/8 x 1-1/2 in.

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 contributed to the monumental Fauna Japonica (1833-1850), published in Leiden.