This vase is painted on a clear crackled glaze with a continuous view of Lake Biwa, Japan’s largest lake and a classic subject of landscape painting. Figures gather beneath blossoming cherry trees at a shrine, and boats lie along a rocky coastline, with mountains in the distance. Below runs a band of floral lozenges. The shoulder carries a lappet border alternating peonies and chrysanthemums.
The elongated neck is painted with trailing wisteria in pink, blue and purple, beneath a key-fret border, and floral vines circle the rim and foot. The vase is 21.8 centimetres high and signed in gilt on the underside ‘Yabu Meizan’. Offered at Bonhams, Fine Japanese and Korean Works of Art, New York, on 18 March 2015, lot 3132. It realised US$31,250 including buyer’s premium, against an estimate of US$30,000–US$40,000.