Landscape in Moonlight
Kano Tan’yū brilliantly recasts landscape motifs taken from the traditional subject Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang Rivers. In an ethereal panoramic view, the artist balances unpainted void with painted form and exploits the separate-but-linked quality of the triptych format. These paintings (1975.268.49–.51) by Tan’yū, the Tokugawa shogunate’s official painter (goyō-eshi), reveal a striking shift of taste from the lush heroic style of the Momoyama period (late sixteenth to early seventeenth century) to the more subdued and erudite style of the Kano school, which dominated Japanese art through the Edo period.
All three scrolls bear the signature “Hōin Tan’yū,” which indicates that they were made after the influential painter was granted the honorific title Hōin (Seal of the Buddhist Law) from the palace in 1662 at age sixty-one.
All three scrolls bear the signature “Hōin Tan’yū,” which indicates that they were made after the influential painter was granted the honorific title Hōin (Seal of the Buddhist Law) from the palace in 1662 at age sixty-one.
Artwork Details
- 狩野探幽筆 月夜山水図
- Title: Landscape in Moonlight
- Artist: Kano Tan'yū (Japanese, 1602–1674)
- Period: Edo period (1615–1868)
- Date: after 1662
- Culture: Japan
- Medium: One of a triptych of hanging scrolls; ink on silk
- Dimensions: Image: 39 5/8 x 16 3/4 in. (100.6 x 42.5 cm)
Overall: 75 1/4 x 23 1/2 in. (191.1 x 59.7 cm) - Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975
- Object Number: 1975.268.50
- Curatorial Department: Asian Art
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Kano Tan'yū
after 1662
Kano Tan'yū
after 1662
Kano Tan'yū
mid-17th century
Kano Tan'yū
probably 17th or 18th century
Kano Tan'yū
dated 1666
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