ATTRIBUTED TO KANO TANSHIN MORIMICHI (1785–1835) The Four Accomplishments, and A Scholar Viewing a Waterfall Edo period (1615–1868), early 19th century
Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New YorkATTRIBUTED TO KANO TANSHIN MORIMICHI (1785–1835)
The Four Accomplishments, and A Scholar Viewing a Waterfall Edo period (1615–1868), early 19th centuryA two-panel folding screen painted on both sides in ink, colors, and gold on cedar wood, mounted in later wood frames with metal hinges, depicting on one side Chinese scholars with attendants engaging in the Four Scholarly Accomplishments (playing the qin, playing weiqi, calligraphy, and connoisseurship of paintings; in Japanese, kinkishoga): on the right-hand panel a scholar sitting at a table playing the qin (koto) while two companions listen in a room decked out with scholarly accouterments and furniture, the art of calligraphy conveyed by a low table with books, scrolls, and writing implements, a two-part red seal Morimichi below the low table; on the left-hand panel two scholars admiring a hanging scroll of a mountain landscape with a pavilion, held up by an attendant, a weiqi (go) table set up in the background; on the other side, the right-hand panel with a Chinese scholar on a path overhung with pine trees contemplating a waterfall (a subject known in Japanese as kanbaku, a term taken from a famous poem by Chinese poet Li Bai [701–762]), accompanied by a red-crowned crane and attended by two servants who cross a bridge over a stream on the left-hand panel, one of them carrying a qin wrapped in a cloth 78 7/8 x 40 1/2in (200.3 x 102.9cm) overall, each panel
Although no exact parallel has been identified for the Morimichi 守道 seal seen on the right-hand panel, this screen is painted with great skill in an unmistakable late-Kano style and despite its unconventional (but not unprecedented) support of wood rather than paper, can be attributed with some degree of confidence to the workshop of Kano Tanshin Morimichi (1785-1835), seventh head of the Kajibashi, a major branch of the Kano academy based in Edo (Tokyo). Both subjects depicted are staples of the Kano pictorial canon dating back to the sixteenth century. An official painter to the Shogunate, Tanshin was involved in the production of folding screens presented to Korean envoys and also painted sliding door panels for Edo castle (unusually, he also painted ukiyo-e subjects). The historic collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston-rich in later Kano painting-include a large group of hanging scrolls by him, mostly featuring Chinese subjects painted in ink and colors on silk. (collections.mfa.org/search/ objects/*/tanshin%20 morimichi)
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