This is a venerable and beautiful scroll with a painting on silk by renowned and influential artist Kano Tanyu, the most illustrious artist from the long line of Kano school painters. He was also an art historian, connoisseur, and arbiter of refined taste.

I believe he made this painting around 1650. This painting is one of those cases where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, but the parts are so wonderful, that many of them could stand by themselves. I think that Tanyu is often overlooked for his romantic, fanciful and inventive capabilities. For this is surely not a literal representation of any landscape he had seen, but an invention of his extremely fertile imagination. He was a great artist and a great painter.

Born in  1602 in Kyoto, Kano Tanyu was the most influential painter of the Tokugawa period n Japan.

His choice of subjects, such as figures embodying Confucian ethical precepts and his return to the subdued tones and designs of the early Kano painters set the standards for later Kano artists. His masterful brushwork and brilliant sense of com[position are clearly evident in this painting.

The extent to which his art reflected the tastes of the military rulers of his day may be deduced from the honors bestowed upon him. At the age of 17, he was appointed the official painter to the shogun and given an estate at Kajibashi, which became the name associated with his school. He decorated the walls of many palaces and castles, including Nijo Castle in Kyoto, the shogun's castle at Nagoya and the Kyoto Imperial Palace.

At the age of 34 he assumed the temple name Tanyu, and two years later was raised to an exalted position in the Buddhist clergy. 

Together with his grandfather, Eitoku and his great-great-grandfather, Motonobu, Kano Tanyu is celebrated as one of the "Three Famous Brushes" of the Kano family.

His works are in nearly every major collection around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The Ashmolean Museum, the British Museum and every important collection in Japan.

The present painting is an example par excellence of Tanyu's style and aesthetic. I have owned this scroll for a long time and it is one I often display as I never get tired of looking at all of the large and small visual inventions of this great artist. This is definitely "serious" work of high art, but it is also a supremely delightful expression of a brilliant and imaginative talent.

The elegant mounting may be original to the painting.

Tanyu has given us a most lyrical representation of a cascading waterfall, in an immense space with clouds of mist rising from the bottom of the great cascade of water

I particularly admire the deft and economical means with which the artist has painted the rocky crags and the subtle way he has left the untouched silk to represent the rising mist and the cascading water itself.

He has used the technique of sotogama extensively in this work. Sotogama is the subtle painting around an element in a painting rather than painting the element itself. Tanyu uses this technique to emphasize the top of the cascade and especially in the waves and mists at the bottom.

I particularly enjoy the contrast between the softness of the water and mists with hard and strongly delineated boulders at the top.

This is a wonderful painting.

This kind of landscape painting is known as sansui-ga, one of three artistic subjects deriving from the Chinese influence and classification of art. The other two are birds and flowers, kacho-ga, and figures jimbutsu-ga.

The sansui-ga tradition is contrary to that of the European artists of the Renaissance, who set man at the center of their works, using landscape merely as background. In Chinese and Japanese landscape painting, man is just a random, transient phenomenon of existence. In fact, in this present scroll, he is not present at all.

This present painting is a good example of its enduring value in the choice of subject, which is conducive both to meditation and quiet emotion. 

This is a peaceful, though dramatic, scene detached from everyday life, where one can find the purity of nature, and contemplate the power of the natural order. The various natural elements and especially the empty spaces are carefully composed to create a romantic setting and to convey an intellectual serenity. This type of painting was intended for the elite, the educated, the nobility, who understood its philosophical codes. 

It is almost a perfect example of the Japanese aesthetic called Wabi-sabi. A worldview centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete".

The water keeps falling, but it is never the same water, always changing, always the same. Never completed, never "perfect".

This scroll measures 78 inches long and 29 inches wide, not including the roller ends, which are of bone. The painting has absolutely no serious damage; there are some expected wrinkles but they do not compromise either the physical or the aesthetic integrity of the painting. 

The old elegant mounting, on the other hand, does show its age, probably because of the heaviness of the material of which it is made. The top and bottom sections are made of a fine old brocade with a rich chestnut brown satin ground and a large foliage design in lighter colored threads.
 
The part that surrounds the painting is of a very heavy brocade with a nearly black ground and a very large floral design in metallic threads. And the two borders at the top and bottom of the painting have sets of two white and light green, fourteen-petalled chrysanthemums, the mon, or seal, used by members of the imperial Japanese family. The Emperor uses a sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum as his mon.

This mounting show a great deal of age, but I believe it may be original to the painting, is very interesting in itself and still serves the painting very well. And so, at least to my way of thinking, it should be conserved.

The photos give a very good idea of the excellence, beauty and power of this magisterial painting on silk by the illustrious artist, Kano Tanyu, from around 1650 in the early Edo Period.    

If you should have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. 

And thanks for looking.

This scroll is around 367 or so years old and has passed through many difficult times including two World Wars, the second of which was disastrous for its native country. For an unframed work on such a delicate support as silk, it is remarkable that it has survived at all, let alone in such good condition. But this scroll and similar works of art are not in absolutely perfect condition and they frequently show evidence of their long life. I endeavor to point out if and where there may be any damage, but the photographs tell the whole story. Please examine them carefully. If you are looking for something with absolutely no signs of age, I am afraid you will have to look elsewhere. In short, these beautiful scrolls were not born yesterday.

I indicate the artist's name based on a signature and/or seal and also the style, but occasionally a painting may be a copy of a work by a famous painter. In the present case, I am sure the painting is by Kano Tanyu.

Due to limitations of photography and the inevitable differences in monitor settings, the color of the pictures on your monitor may be slightly different from the scroll itself, but I did my best to capture it as it is. And, at least on my monitor, the color is a very good match.

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