Japanese Masterpieces 17th-21st Centuries
July 17 – August 31, 2026
8 East 67th Street, NYC
We are delighted to invite you to our summer exhibition Japanese Masterpieces 17th–21st Centuries, on view through August 31.
The exhibition spans four centuries of Japanese art, featuring an early 17th-century six-panel screen depicting scenes from life at the Chinese imperial court and a pair of screens from circa 1620 showing places along the Tokaido road. Later screens include a composition on gold-leaf of blooming cherry and maple from the early 1800s and screens by Sasaki Shunka and Fudo Ritsuzan from the 1930s.
At the heart of the show is a group of hanging scrolls by leading painters of the Taisho and early Showa eras, among them Yamamoto Shunkyo, Kikuchi Keigetsu, Ikeda Yoson, and Konoshima Okoku. This was a period in which artists working for the domestic market brought new naturalism and Western experimentation to traditional formats.
Alongside the paintings, the exhibition features ikebana bamboo baskets by masters including Tanabe Chikuunsai II and Hayakawa Shōkosai V, who was a Living National Treasure, as well as bronzes ranging from mid-century vessels by Hasuda Shūgorō and Yoneda Bisho to a 2025 work by contemporary artist Koji Hatakeyama.
We look forward to welcoming you this summer!
To learn more, click here.
PAST EXHIBITION
Japanese Ceramics and Modern Paintings
May 13 – June 26, 2026
Reception: Tuesday, June 2, 5:30pm to 7:30pm
We are delighted to invite you to our new exhibition Japanese Ceramics and Modern Paintings, on view through June 26.
Celebrating one of the most enduring and vital traditions in Japanese art, the exhibition brings together ceramic works spanning from fifteenth-century stoneware vessels to refined contemporary porcelains, tracing over 10,000 years of artistic innovation and aesthetic continuity.
Complementing the ceramics is a selection of Japanese screen and scroll paintings from the first half of the twentieth century, creating a rich dialogue between material, form, and modern expression.
To learn more, click here.
About the Gallery
Thomsen Gallery, located in a townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, offers important Japanese paintings and works of art to collectors and museums worldwide. The gallery specializes in Japanese screens and scrolls; in early Japanese tea ceramics from the medieval through the Edo periods; in masterpieces of ikebana bamboo baskets; and in gold lacquer objects. It further specializes in post-war ink art and Gutai art as well as contemporary art by select artists, such as the internationally renowned Japanese ceramic artist Sueharu Fukami, the paper artist Kyoko Ibe, and the lacquer artist Yoshio Okada.
The gallery is owned by Erik and Cornelia Thomsen, who live and work in New York. Erik has been a dealer in Japanese art since 1981; born to Danish parents and raised in Japan, he is fluent in Japanese and was the first foreigner to apprentice to an art dealer in Japan. They have three children, Julia, Anna, and Georg.
