The 21 Artworks of Kano Tan'yu

Kano Tan’yū brilliantly recasts landscape motifs taken from the traditional subject Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang Rivers. In an ethereal panoramic view, the artist balances unpainted void with painted form and exploits the separate-but-linked quality of the triptych format. These paintings (1975.268...

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Kano Tan’yū brilliantly recasts landscape motifs taken from the traditional subject Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang Rivers. In an ethereal panoramic view, the artist balances unpainted void with painted form and exploits the separate-but-linked quality of the triptych format. These paintings (1975.268...

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At far right, a stream fed by melting snow comes tumbling down out of the mountains, symbolizing the onset of spring. This foreground of waterfalls, bent trees, and rooftops suddenly gives way to an expanse of blank paper—a diagonal swath of mist that parts to reveal distant summer mountains. A floc...

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In this large vertical composition, Tan'yū depicted the famous Northern Song calligrapher Mi Fu (1051–1107) writing a poem on a rock surface at a celebrated literati party known as the Elegant Gathering at the Western Garden. This panel also bears Tan'yū's title, mention of his age (sixty-five), and...

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Seasonal landscapes in a Chinese style evoking summer and winter flank an imaginary portrait of Shennong (Japanese: Shinnō), the legendary Chinese emperor and reputed inventor of agriculture and herbal medicine. The landscapes, markedly asymmetrical in keeping with the Chinese Southern Song (1127–12...

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Seasonal landscapes in a Chinese style evoking summer and winter flank an imaginary portrait of Shennong (Japanese: Shinnō), the legendary Chinese emperor and reputed inventor of agriculture and herbal medicine. The landscapes, markedly asymmetrical in keeping with the Chinese Southern Song (1127–12...

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Seasonal landscapes in a Chinese style evoking summer and winter flank an imaginary portrait of Shennong (Japanese: Shinnō), the legendary Chinese emperor and reputed inventor of agriculture and herbal medicine. The landscapes, markedly asymmetrical in keeping with the Chinese Southern Song (1127–12...

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This small image, executed with a few brushstrokes in light ink, is Kano Tan'yū's reiteration of a legendary painting of the early thirteenth century by the renowned Southern Song Chinese painter Liang Kai (now in the Tokyo National Museum). It illustrates a Zen parable regarding Hui-neng (638–713),...

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This elegant vision of the bodhisattva Jizō Bosatsu (Sanskrit: Ksitigarbha) playing a flute is a rare and innovative portrayal that may have been created by Kano Tan’yū himself, who, as head of the Shogun’s painting academy (edokoro), was familiar with most of the ancient paintings that had survived...

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Tan’yū is best known as the heir to the mantle of the Kano school of painters in the early seventeenth to mid-seventeenth century, so it comes as a surprise to see a boldly inscribed pair of oversize Chinese characters signed with his art name. Yet several works by the famous artist survive written ...

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