Butterflies

The lacquer artist Shibata Zeshin (1807-1891) was one of the elite group of craftsmen schooled in the fashions of the Edo period who made the great leap from the dictates of the feudal society into the Age of Enlightenment and Westernization in Japan in the Meiji era (1868 -1912). In 1891, Zeshin was appointed a Teishitsu Gigei-In (Imperial Household Artist), and became a professor of the Tokyo University of Fine Arts together with his fellow Imperial Artist Kano Natsuo (1828-1898).