Japanese Edo Bronze Tiger

Japanese Edo Bronze Tiger, ca. end of the 18th Century AD. An unusual example of the traditional style Japanese Tiger as opposed to the realistic Western style of the muscular and fierce Meiji bronze tigers. With virtually no direct contact with lions, leopards and tigers, Japanese artists gave the great cats an iconography of its own. Some temples in Kyoto even depict leopards as female tigers in screens. With their huge eyes and bushy eyebrows, their distinctive strips within a fur pattern, Japanese tigers have more the physique of an accessible house cat than an exotic tiger. In sculptural form this archaic tiger is more common in early netsuke. Ex HJB 141st Buy or Bid Sale, December 2004, lot 771. H. 2 1/4" (5.7 cm)..