Kanō school
狩野派
The largest school of painting in Japan, active from the mid-Muromachi period through the Edo period, painters to the shogunate who joined Chinese-style ink painting with the color of Yamato-e.
01About
The Kanō school began in the mid-Muromachi period, when Kanō Masanobu became painter to the shogunate, and lasted to the end of the Edo period. Masanobu learned from Chinese Song and Yuan painting; his son Motonobu joined that to the decoration of Yamato-e and ran a workshop of many pupils. Their “Japanese–Chinese” style kept ink as its base and added strong color and gold. Motonobu's grandson Eitoku painted vast pictures for the castles of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Under the Tokugawa, Tan'yū and his brothers settled in Edo; four houses became the shogun's official painters (okue-shi), with lesser houses and pupils ranked below them. Pupils learned by copying set models. Many painters of other schools, such as Ogata Kōrin, began by studying under a Kanō painter.
02In the gallery
Compare how much of the surface is filled. Large Momoyama-style Kanō pictures fill it with huge trees, while Tan'yū's compositions leave much of it empty.
Wall label terms in Japanese
- 漢画
- Kanga (Chinese-style painting)
- 和漢兼帯
- Wa-kan kentai (joining Japanese and Chinese styles)
- 障壁画
- Wall and screen painting (shōhekiga)
- 御用絵師
- Painter to the shogunate (goyō eshi)
03Notes
The Kanō school joined the brush of ink painting with the heavy color and gold of Yamato-e.
Do you see a surface filled to the edges, or one with wide empty space?