Sketch for a Painting of Scholars at the Game of Go
Kano artist after Kano Tan'yū Japanese
Not on view
Kano Tan'yū, the founder of the phenomenally successful Edo branch of the Kano school of painting, which continued to hold hegemony over all the artists throughout the Edo period, was in constant demand for his connoisseurship of Chinese and Japanese paintings of the past. In his later years, Tan'yū studiously made copies of the paintings that were brought to him for his judgment. The copies (shukuzu, or "reduced pictures") are indispensable records of the works still extant during his time.
Symbolizing Confucian ideals, two gentlemen are engaged in a game of go, one of the Four Gentlemanly Accomplishments, while two observers are in conversation. Three other accomplishments required of learned gentlemen are music, painting, and calligraphy.
Tan'yū signed his title hōin and his age as sixty-five.
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