Nanga (Bunjinga)

also: Bunjinga · Nanshūga · Japanese literati painting

school 18th-early 20th century Japan

Nanga, also called Bunjinga ('literati painting'), was a school of Japanese painting that flourished in the late Edo period among artists who styled themselves bunjin - scholar-intellectuals devoted to Chinese culture. Its name abbreviates nanshūga, the 'Southern School' of Chinese literati painting (wenrenhua), whose models reached Japan in limited, often indirect form through the trade at Nagasaki and woodblock-printed painting manuals. Because sakoku policy kept Japan largely sealed off, Japanese bunjin worked from an incomplete picture of Chinese ideals, and the result became something new: monochrome ink landscapes and bird-and-flower subjects, animated by poetry and calligraphic inscription, that prized the rhythm of nature over realistic description. Defined partly by its rejection of the official Kanō and Tosa schools, nanga prized individuality - every painter developed a personal hand - and waned after the Edo period as Western styles arrived.

Example work related to "Nanga (Bunjinga)".
Example work related to "Nanga (Bunjinga)".Public domain (credit: Tani Bunchō) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Monochrome black ink, sometimes touched with light colour, on paper or silk
  • Chinese subjects: misty mountain landscapes, rivers, pines, birds and flowers
  • Poems and inscriptions woven into the picture, often brushed in by the painter's friends
  • Calligraphic brushwork that records the rhythm of nature rather than describing it
  • An air of cultivated amateurism: the painter as scholar-poet, not studio professional
  • Strongly individual hands - no fixed house style passed from master to pupil

Key figures

  • Yosa Buson (1716-1783) — Great poet-painter of the school, celebrated for landscape and haiga
  • Ike no Taiga (1723-1776) — Leading nanga master, known for playful, boldly brushed ink landscapes
  • Watanabe Kazan (1793-1841) — Confucian scholar-painter of the late school, admired for portraiture and landscape
  • Tomioka Tessai (1837-1924) — Widely regarded as the last of the nanga artists; bold, free late style

Example works

  • Fishing in Spring — Ike no Taiga (18th century)
  • Blue-green landscape — Tani Bunchō (1807)

Sources

← Back to the catalog