École

1800 · 63904 — Tokyo & Kyoto Japan: Kano School ca. 1800-1810. One 4to. art sample design portfolio sized 12.5 x 14 in. which folds out into giant montage of six large original late-Edo-Period Kano School screen designs on durable handmade Japanese rice paper measuring 110 x 75 in. carefully pasted as montage some titled as well as featuring ink manuscript painting instructions ordered counter-clockwise: “Bamboo scene†47 x 38.5 in.; King Tang of Shang court scene 36.5 x 39 in.; 2nd Court scene 38.75 x 38.75 in.; Pine tree landscape 38.75 x 38.75 in.; Crane 28.75 x 39 in.; and Island pagoda landscape & pine trees 31 x 41.75 in six w/ original colour painting some colour painting & material instructions in Japanese all arranged to compactly fold and bound with colour woodblock illustrated cloth and old bookseller labels mounted on verso some repairs to corners to reattach the boards thumbing & minor tears a fold creases w/ a few occasional paper repairs at the first most frequently used fold minor creasing & edgewear dustsoiling to fold creases interior offset toning from sizing & paint colours still an extraordinary exemplar. This exceptional late-Edo-period original Kano School painting montage incorporates many of the elements developed by the famed multi-generational painters whom over four centuries revived and shaped Chinese idealist traditions into a uniquely vigorous Japanese art style. The Kano school painters emphasized landscapes Imperial court interior & exterior architectural elements colours uses of gold animal and botanical subjects often creating crowded panoramic scenes typically used in wall & door screens as well as triptych folding wall screens. The repeated instructions on these designs in Japanese by Sasayama Tsutsumu -- one of several Sasayama painters who took that name from the 18th- to 19th-Centuries in the Kano School beginning with Sasayama Yoi d. 1743 student of Kano Sunnobu 1636-1713 and subsequently four more generations afterwards nearly all adopted and chiefly serving the Chofu domain -- specify these designs are each one of three pieces. In addition there are ink manuscript memos appearing with directions on pigments for the final design work such as adding mica flecks or other paints & dyes and these sketches captured key features of a design so that students or other Kano artists could sufficiently enlarge recreated and fully understand the steps required for the finished decorative artwork pieces. The upper right first image presents bamboo looming in the weather emphasizing their connections to architectural features; The second and third designs capture the golden age Curt of the King of Shang in 1600 B.C. memorialized later as the Xia Dynasty; the fourth presents a rugged hillside and trees shrouded in clouds; the fourth a wonderful large crane apparently intended as part of a much larger piece; and finally the sixth lower right features distant pagoda temple shrouded mountains flower-bedecked pine tree in foreground and with delicate colouring and shading. Naganobu Kano fl. 1775-1828 and his son Osanobu Seisenin Kano 1786-1846 were of the Kobikicho family which carried on the Kano School traditions from 1730 until the Meiji Period and were instrumental in producing designs and screens for the Nishinomaru and Honmaru palaces which burned down in 1838 and again in 1844. Even though the paintings no longer exist similar original design such as these do survive in the Tokyo National Museum. Seisenin Kano was especially well known for his art adapted from his studies from ancient paintings at the end of the Edo-period. See: Kano School After the Middle of the Edo Period Art Nomura 2026; Matthew P. McKelway Rediscovering the Kano School Artforum Vol. 53 No. 5 Jan. 2015; Brief Biographies of Scholars Painters and Haiku Poets of Chofu Records of the Sasayama Family Painters of the Chofu Domain 2026. Kano School, hardcover