REF: 5070 - SOLD
Medium – Watercolour on paper
Size - 10" x 14" (25cm x 36cm)
Recto – Signed and stamped with a red Japanese Hanko. Sir Alfred East only added the Hanko stamp to what he considered were his most successful Japanese artworks. The streamers (flags) on the poles in the picture are of Carp fish, representing strength and longevity in Japanese culture. In celebration of The Boys Festival it was customary for families with male children to erect a pole on their homes and for it to be topped by one or more carp streamers.
Verso – An old Gallery label that reads “Atkinson Art Gallery, Southport Centenary Exhibition 1967. Title: Boys Festival, Yokohama. W/C Sir Alfred East”.
PROVENANCE
Atkinson Art Gallery
Abbott & Holder
The Boys Festival, Yokohama is possibly one of the 104 Japanese pictures by Sir Alfred East that was included in The Fine Art Society exhibition of 1890. No: 17 within the catalogue is listed as “The Fuji-San – Seen from a street of Yokohama… in which the “Feast of Flags”, the boys’ festival is going to be celebrated.”
Condition – Excellent
The Boys Festival, Yokohama by Sir Alfred East
Sir Alfred East was born in Kettering in Northamptonshire, England in 1844. Born into a family of shoemakers, Alfred East studied art at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Sir Alfred East's landscapes are heavily influenced by the French Barbizon school of painters and to many he was considered to be the greatest living landscape painter of his time.