Tosa School

Newly listed (and quickly sold), this wonderful Kosa school illustration, featuring the remarkable Japanese pigment 'gofun' or shell white: a form of calcite, calcium carbonate, made of crushed seashells, usually oyster shells. The shells are collected in piles and allowed to age outside for a protracted period, followed by a process of crushing, grinding and pulverizing.

Never doing things by halves, the factory production of the pigment in Japan in the 1970s was observed by art material expert R.J. Gettens to involve the shells being left outside for

fifteen years.

Tosa School paintings, characterised by areas of flat opaque colour enclosed by simple outlines, often depicted scenes relating to the courtly life of Kyoto, and many were inspired by the court romance 'Genji Monogatari'