Modeled with the young hero Benkei capturing a huge leaping carp, the figure and scrolling base decorated in iron-red, green, aubergine and black enamels
8¹⁄₂ in. (21.5 cm.) high

Acquired pre-1979 from A & J Speelman, London, by Ann and Gordon Getty.

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Lot Essay

The figure group depicts a scene from a 12th-century folklore of a Japanese hero Benkei who fought a giant that had killed his mother. Benkei, also known as Onikawa Maru in his youth, was a famed warrior remembered best as being a part of the Yoshitsune of the Minamoto in Kyoto. For a pair of a similar model, see C.J.A. Jörg, Fine & Curious: Japanese Export Porcelain in Dutch Collections, Amsterdam, 2003, p. 284, no. 358. For another model of the same subject, see O. Impey, Japanese export porcelain: Catalogue of the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Amsterdam, 2002, no. 297. Like the present group, the models show Benkei dressed in a fighter's cloth and in battle with the huge fish.