Famous Themes for Painting Study Known as “The Garden of Painting” (Gaen)
Kano Tan'yū Japanese
Not on view
Kano Tan’yū studied prodigious numbers of works from the history of both Chinese and Japanese painting. The fruit of his study was a vast corpus of pattern books and drawings of works of art. This set of two scrolls is filled with an assortment of copies, studies, and sketches.
The first scroll is unrolled to a section showing a study of a painting by Mu Qi, a Chinese Chan (Zen) Buddhist monk-painter of the Southern Song dynasty. The second scroll is open to a sketch of the Buddhist figure Hotei after a work by Kano Motonobu (1476–1559).
This artwork is meant to be viewed from right to left. Scroll left to view more.