Project Description

Netsuke of Yamauba with Kintoki by Sanko 

The hag endowed with horns and fangs, lending her a demonic countenance, walking at a vigorous pace with a gnarled staff in one hand and a billhook in the other, while a diminutive Kintoki perches on her shoulder and pulls at a rope with a dragonfly at the end

Signed on the inside hem of her robe: Sanko.  Osaka, circa 1780

Height: 6.5 cm

Provenance: 

Dr. Jay Hopkins, Lynchburg VA

Information: 

There are probably half a dozen variants of the subject by Sanko, ranging in height between 5.7 and 8.3 cm, and including one from the Jacques Carré collection, no. 62 in the Eskenazi catalogue of 1993, now in the Kurstin collection, Miami

Exhibited: 

State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, ‘Netsuke, Japanese Miniature Sculptures from Private Collections’, July-October 2016,no. 128 in the catalogue

MR2725