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Concept
Kanō school
Summary
The Kanō school is one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting. The Kanō school of painting was the dominant style of painting from the late 15th century until the Meiji period which began in 1868, by which time the school had divided into many different branches. The Kanō family itself produced a string of major artists over several generations, to which large numbers of unrelated artists trained in workshops of the school can be added. Some artists married into the family and changed their names, and others were adopted. According to the historian of Japanese art Robert Treat Paine, "another family which in direct blood line produced so many men of genius ... would be hard to find".
The school began by reflecting a renewed influence from Chinese painting, but developed a brightly coloured and firmly outlined style for large panels decorating the castles of the nobility which reflected distinctively Japanese traditions, while continuing to produce monochrome brush paintings in Chinese styles. It was supported by the shogunate, effectively representing an official style of art, which "in the 18th century almost monopolized the teaching of painting". It drew on the Chinese tradition of literati painting by scholar-bureaucrats, but the Kanō painters were firmly professional artists, very generously paid if successful, who received a formal workshop training in the family workshop, in a similar way to European painters of the Renaissance or Baroque. They worked mainly for the nobility, shōguns and emperors, covering a wide range of styles, subjects and formats. Initially innovative, and largely responsible for the new types of painting of the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–1614), from the 17th century the artists of the school became increasingly conservative and academic in their approach.
The school was founded by the very long-lived Kanō Masanobu (1434–1530), who was the son of Kagenobu, a samurai and amateur painter. Masanobu was a contemporary of Sesshū (1420–1506), a leader of the revival of Chinese influence, who had actually visited China in mid-career, in around 1467.
Official source
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