Located in Lymington, Hampshire
A Meiji period bronze sculpture of a mother and son by Atsuyoshi, she is shown seated on a gnarled rootwood base, with her arm round a crying boy standing by her knee and offering her breast, wearing a short robe, trousers and a cloth incised with Mount Fuji around her head, and bare feet. Signed Atsuyoshi saku, Maruki Shachu seisaku (??????????? (??????????). Japanese, circa 1880.
Footnote: Atsuyoshi is known for a number of finely modelled bronze studies of both wild and domesticated animals, almost all of them made for the Tokyo based Maruki Company. This is therefore an unusual subject matter for him and Japanese bronzes in general , however Oliver Impey and Joyce Seaman, in ‘Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period’ (in the Ashmolean Museum Collections), pp. 68-69, include a bronze group of a woman who has just finished breast feeding...
Category
Japanese Meiji Antique 1880s Metalwork