Chinese landscape

As the patriarch of the Edo branch of the Kano family and the chief official painter to the military government in Edo (now Tokyo), Tan’yu’s atelier was located immediately outside the shogun’s castle. No artist was more influential in his day. His conservative style, drawing on both Chinese and Japanese traditions, was perpetuated for generations. Here, the artist evokes seasonal themes of summer on the right and fall and winter on the left, with generic Chinese scenery set against a sumptuous gold ground. For Tan’yu, see Yukio Lippit, Paintings of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in 17th-Century Japan (Seattle and London: The University of Washington Press, 2012); also Felice Fischer and Kyoko Kinoshita, Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2015).