JAPANESE BRONZE OF A MOTHER AND CHILD BY UDAGAWA
KAZUO MEIJI PERIOD (EARLY 20TH CENTURY)

An Udagawa Kazuo cast bronze figure of a young mother with her child, seated on a wooden bench. Tokyo. Around 1900-1910.

A young peasant woman seated on a wooden bench, holding an infant in her arms, who places his hands on the mother's bare chest.
With her right hand, the young woman is poking (chop sticks lost) at a ( bentobako lost) with rice and vegetable, whose flat lid is placed next to the box and whose wrapping cloth (furoshiki) hangs over the edge of the (bench lost). SEALED NIHON TOKYO UDAGAWA KAZUO SEI  
Height 58 cm


Udagawa Kazuo from Tokyo exhibited at international exhibitions between 1900 and 1910. This figure model was shown at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in 1904 and at the Japan-British Exhibition in London in 1910. The model was also made in the combination of wood and ivory (Nihon no zôge bijutsu, Shoto Museum, Tokyo 1996, p. 105). The same model also exists in plaster by Murata Kichigorô, exhibited at the 5th National Industrial Exhibition in 1903.


Provenance
Old private Geneva Swiss Family collection 


Literature
Cf. almost identical pieces: J. Harada, Japanese Art and Artists of To-Day. - V. Metal Work, in: Studio, 1919, p. 102; Japan and Europe 1546-1929, exhibition catalogue, Berlin 1993, fig. 20/1, p. 588; J. Earl, Splendors of Imperial Japan, Arts of the Meiji Period from the Khalili Collection, London 2002, p. 376, cat. no. 269. Another piece was sold at Lempertz 11/12.6.2010, lot 728
JAPANESE BRONZE OF A MOTHER AND CHILD BY UDAGAWA KAZUO

Date: Meiji period

Height: 23 ins / 58.5 cm