Label Text:
Kiyohara Yukinobu, one of the few women painters to achieve recognition in her own day, was a member of the well-known Kano school, an academic training ground that has been compared to the Académie des Beaux-Art in France. The daughter and wife of painters, she was also the niece of Kano Tan'yu, one of the most important artists of 17th-century Japan. Like other members of the Kano school, Yukinobu maintained a broad thematic range but was especially distinguished for her depictions of women. Most of her work took the form of paintings on silk mounted as hanging scrolls.
In this pair of screens—the only known example of screen paintings by her—Yukinobu follows Tan'yu's tradition of synthesizing Chinese and Japanese elements, using her fluid brushwork to depict a group of Taoist immortals. Artists in both countries were fond of representing gatherings of divinities, and here the artist depicts
eight of them, along with a child. Two of the immortals most popular in Japan are seen in the right-hand screen: at the far right
is Tekkai, who blows his spirit out of his body in order to travel the world; to his left, Gama watches as his three-legged white toad dances gaily. Following Kano prototypes based ultimately on Chinese images, Yukinobu concentrates on the depiction of the figures, including only enough landscape elements to suggest the natural setting.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=MH+1996.7 |
