Personally, I am a big fan of Kano school painting style, that’s why I am using the opportunity to do an artist research about painters who used landscapes as their main subjects. Definitely Kano school paintings are a great example of landscape artworks- their main subject was landscape with all it’s elements – sky and clouds, birds and animals, flowers and trees, water and mountains – you can find everything.
I have posted earlier my post about the book I am reading about Kano and its influence and contribution to world art. I even try to produce artworks in Kano style and Kano style definitely has a great impact on developing my own style as an artist – My 2nd Assignment was done as a contribution ( ambitions but far from valuable:))) to Kano style.
Every artist research should contain a brief reference about him, so I picked up the main idea which I post below.
Kano Eitoku was a Japanese painter ( 1543-1590), the grandson of Kanō Motonobu (1476–1559) – a founder of most successful and long lived, so called “Kano School” of Japanese painting. He was born in Kyoto and received his training from his father Kano Shoei and his grandfather, a great Master of the School – Kano Motonobu. During his lifetime, Eitoku was an official painter for the Ashikaga shogunate. He was recognized for his artistic talent at a very young age. Under Motonobu’s guidance, he developed his grandfather’s style, which had influence from Chinese painting.
His signal contribution to the Kanō repertoire was the so-called “monumental style” (taiga), characterized by bold, rapid brushwork, an emphasis on foreground, and motifs that are large relative to the pictorial space. His talent was very much appreciate by that time military dictators of Japan – by Oda Nobunaga and his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi who patronised him giving commissions.
Unfortunately, most of his works were destroyed in the turmoil of the Sengoku period. However, those that do still exist provide testimony to his talent, to the power and wealth of his patrons Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, and to the magnificence of Azuchi-Momoyama culture. Symbolic representations, like pheasants, phoenixes and trees are often depicted in the works. Among the most remarkable are six-fold screen representing a Japanese cedar “hinoki”, a large screen with lions and pair of screens showing hawks and pines.
Here are the some artworks of Kano Eitoku:
”Plum Tree” (image by mutualart.com)
“Flowers and birds of Four seasons” (image by mutualart.com)
I can say that Eitoku’s landscapes are definitely imaginary, they had been created not from a real existing natural scene. I find many small details on all objects at the paintings except the sky. The gold background as a compulsory element of Kano school artworks probably didn’t allow lot of work about the sky and clouds. That was because the artworks required a lot of sophisticated and meticulous work on creating this famous gold backgrounds, several quite technological and creative techniques were developed, so there was no sense to cover them with additional layers of paint. On the first painting the “Plum Tree” the tree looks very natural because branches and the stem are painted with great detail. The sky look as “misty” and foggy. On the second painting “Flowers and Birds of the Four Seasons” the landscape is done in a much more decorative style, what is a distinctive feature of most Kano school artworks. I also can say that there is no much of perspective at the painting and the back looks quite flat, the clouds are indicated by simple shapes. The water doesn’t contain waves and lot of movement.
Reference list:
2) Japanese-paintings.weebly.com
3) Felice Ficsher and Kyoko Kinoshita “Ink and Gold of Kano”; Yale University Press
4) bioghraphy.yourdictionary.com “Kano Eitoku Facts”
JeanArt 