246 - A VERY RARE SIX-PANEL ‘WHALE HUNT’ BYOBU (FOLDING SCREEN)

A VERY RARE SIX-PANEL ‘WHALE HUNT’ BYOBU (FOLDING SCREEN) Japan, 17 th-18 th century, Edo period (1615-1868) Ink, watercolors, gold paint, and gold leaf on paper. Mounted on silk brocade on six roiro-lacquered wood panels with metal fittings. The expansive maritime composition depicting numerous whaling boats navigating a densely patterned sea, their crews pursuing, encircling, and harpooning whales amid rhythmic rows of white-crested waves. The scene is animated by signal flags, long poles, harpoons, and tightly packed groups of fishermen straining at their oars or leaning into the hunt, while several dark-bodied whales break the surface between the vessels. Scattered passages of gold enliven the sea and heighten the dramatic movement of the composition. The large upper pictorial field is set above a smaller plain lower register, the two separated by a narrow silk brocade border. SIZE 229.5 x 371 cm Provenance: The private collection of Laura-Lee W. Woods, California, USA. Laura-Lee Whittier Woods (1926-2025) was an American art collector and patron. She studied painting and sculpture at Bennington College under Paul Feeley and subsequently at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1959, Woods lived near Osaka and traveled regularly to Kyoto, where she studied with a Japanese potter. She later became active with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Junior Art Council, through which she visited the studios of artists including Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston and began building her own collection. Over the following decades, Woods assembled an extensive collection and became an important museum benefactor, donating works to institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Art Museum, and museums throughout California. Condition: Good condition with old wear and well-preserved, vibrant colors. Expected flaking to pigment and gold. Scattered tears and small losses with associated old repairs and touchups. The back with traces of wear and use, scratches, small tears, and old repairs. Organized coastal whaling developed into a highly coordinated maritime industry during the Edo period. In Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, hand-harpoon whaling was established in 1606, while the introduction of net whaling later in the 17 th century required increasingly large and specialized crews. Fleets of boats, signal systems, harpooners, net crews, and hundreds of workers were involved in the pursuit and processing of whales. Despite its economic importance, whale hunting was only rarely depicted in Japanese painting. Among the few surviving examples is Tosa Mitsunori’s (1583-1638) six-panel 'Whale Harvesting' screen in the Osaka Museum of History, considered the earliest surviving Japanese painting devoted to the subject. The present screen vividly conveys the collective nature of the hunt. Numerous boats and whales are distributed across the expanse of the sea. The extensive use of gold and repeated scalloped wave patterns lend the scene a highly decorative quality, while the minute figures preserve remarkable detail concerning the organization and equipment of the hunt. The rarity of surviving whale-hunting imagery makes the present screen an unusual pictorial record of one of Edo Japan’s most demanding maritime industries. Auction comparison: Compare a related pair of six-panel folding screens by Makino Baisen, ‘Whales and hunting boats’, ink, color and gold flecks on paper, dated 19th century, 159.4 x 395.7 cm each, at Christie’s, An Inquiring Mind: American Collecting of Japanese and Korean Art, 15 April 2016, New York, lot 21 (sold for USD 137,000 or approx. EUR 167,000 converted and adjusted for inflation at the time of writing).