Parody of the Four Accomplishments, Framed Woodblock Print by Shibata Zeshin

Shibata Zeshin (柴田 是真, March 15, 1807 – July 13, 1891) was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era. He has been called “Japan’s greatest lacquerer”, but his reputation as painter and print artist is more complex: In Japan, he is known as both too modern, a panderer to the Westernization movement, and also an overly conservative traditionalist who did nothing to stand out from his contemporaries. Despite holding this complicated reputation in Japan, Zeshin has come to be well regarded and much studied among the art world of the West, in Britain and the United States in particular.