Kanō school

Founded by Kanō Masanobu in the Muromachi period, the Kanō school became the official painting workshop of Japan's military rulers, a position it held from the Ashikaga shoguns through the Tokugawa until the nineteenth century. Masanobu and his son Motonobu fused Chinese Song-style ink painting with the decorative colour of Japanese yamato-e, creating a formula the workshop could teach, copy and scale. Under Kanō Eitoku the style went monumental: vast gold-leaf screens of pines, tigers and dragons for castles and palaces. After the turmoil of the civil wars, Kanō Tan'yū re-established the school in Edo as painters to the Tokugawa shogunate, and the family's dominance ended only with the Meiji reforms - the last great master, Kanō Hōgai, died in 1888.

Defining characteristics

• Confident, calligraphic outline brushwork derived from Chinese ink painting
• Japanese decorative colour and gold-leaf grounds laid over the ink structure
• Canonical motifs: pine, crag, waterfall, dragon, tiger, birds and flowers
• Large folding screens (byōbu) and sliding-door paintings (fusuma) sized for castles and temples
• Range from spare monochrome ink landscapes to lavish polychrome gold compositions
• Workshop production: canonical designs transmitted through generations of the Kanō family

Key figures

• Kanō Masanobu (1434-1530) — Chief painter to the Ashikaga shogunate and founder of the Kanō school
• Kanō Motonobu (1476-1559) — Masanobu's son who fused Chinese ink painting with Japanese colour and codified the workshop style
• Kanō Eitoku (1543-1590) — Master of monumental gold-leaf screen painting for castle patrons
• Kanō Tan'yū (1602-1674) — Re-established the school in Edo as painter to the Tokugawa shogunate
• Kanō Hōgai (1828-1888) — Last great Kanō master, who carried the tradition into the modern era

Example works

• Chinese Lions — Kanō Eitoku (1572)
• Birds and Flowers of Spring and Summer — Kanō Eino (17th century)

Sources

• Kanō school - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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