Wang Ziyou Visiting Dai Andao on a Snowy Evening (Ō Shiyū hō Tai Andō zu)
Kano Sansetsu Japanese
Not on view
According to a story recorded in a fifth-century Chinese compilation of tales, the poet-calligrapher Wang Ziyou (321–379), traveled by boat to visit his friend Dai Andao on a snowy night. However, once he reached his destination, Wang turned around and went home without actually seeing his friend, having fulfilled his interest in taking the trip. In this pristine and spartan scene of snow and distant mountains, in which empty space adds as much atmosphere as the pictorial elements, the poet is a diminutive element in the face of the vastness of the winter landscape.
A major Kano-school artist of the early Edo period, Sansetsu produced a number of paintings on Chinese themes in ink monochrome, but he could also work in a manner that combined aspects of ink painting with the decorative, colorful, gold-enriched mode developed by the Kano atelier in the Momoyama period (1573–1615). This starkly evocative landscape, with clearly defined, crystalline rocks often found in his compositions, belongs to the first of these two styles.
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