Shells

Held in the Takahashi Yuichi-kan at Kotohira-gū in Kagawa prefecture, Shells (貝図, 1879) is among the most refined of Takahashi Yuichi's small studies for the Konpira shrine and one of the works through which he extended the still life beyond food into the description of the natural object itself. The oil on canvas presents an arrangement of marine shells — abalone, scallop and other Pacific bivalves — laid against a dark ground and rendered with the patient curiosity of a painter trained in both Kanō linear observation and European chiaroscuro modelling. Each shell is given its own weight, surface and interior light, and the composition has the quiet, almost reverent character of a votive offering rather than a market display.

The painting belongs to the great series of more than thirty oils that Yuichi produced for Kotohira-gū between 1877 and 1881 and that constitute the largest surviving body of Meiji-period oil painting in any single Japanese collection. As a shrine dedicated to the protection of mariners, Kotohira-gū was the appropriate recipient of marine still lifes, and the Shells is one of the works that integrated Yuichi's new Western technique into the long-established iconography of the Konpira faith.