Project Description
Wood Netsuke of a Lean Wolf with Skull, by Kokei (Tsu, active 1810-30)
Crouching defensively with its left paw on a human skull and tail between its legs, looking up and snarling. Its eyes are double inlays of buffalo horn. Natural himotoshi provided by the right paws
Signed
Length: 4.6 cm
Provenance: Alan Hartman, New York
Fuld lists 10 wolves by Kokei, of which 6 with skulls (one never knows when some are duplicates): one, with right paw on the skull, was in the Jacques Carré collection (Eskenazi catalogue, no. 184), another, with left paw on the skull, formerly in the Bushell collection, is illustrated in the ‘Netsuke Kenkyukai Study Journal’, 6/1, p. 14. Two wolves in the collection of Igor Cheremikin, Moscow, are published, one (with hare) in the article on his collection in the Russian language netsuke journal, no. 6, p. 40, the other (with haunch of venison) in the catalogue of the exhibition at the State Hermitage Museum ‘Netsuke, Japanese Miniature Sculptures from Private Collections’, 2016, no. 79
MR5039
