17th Century Kanō Naganobu Pen & Ink, Watercolor on Silk, Seal & Chop Marks, Framed - 52.75" H

Description

Antique 1600s Kanō Naganobu Japanese Painting, Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion

Very important painting and extremely well priced. Pen & Ink, … more Antique 1600s Kanō Naganobu Japanese Painting, Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion

Very important painting and extremely well priced. Pen & Ink, Watercolor on Silk, Seal & Chop Marks, Framed - 28.75” x 52.75”.

This important framed Japanese painting on silk, is signed with a seal in Kanji, by Kano Naganobu. This very important piece is in the style of of Kano Motonobu’s white robed, Kannon, Bodhisattva of Compassion, which hangs in the Museum of Fine Art (MFA) in Boston.

It was professionally framed between a museum archival quality plexiglass type of frame. The decorative wooden framed is a green wooden mid 20th century looking frame. The Carspecken Scott Gallery of Delaware framed this piece.

This piece is thought to be by the painter, Kanō Naganobu (狩野長信, 1577 – 26 December 1654). He was a Japanese painter of the Kanō school.

Naganobu was the youngest brother of the Kanō school's head, Kanō Eitoku. Naganobu completed numerous commissions for the court in Kyoto, including at the Imperial Palace, and started his own line of the Kanō school. He was the first major Kanō painter to move from Kyoto to Edo (modern Tokyo) as the Tokugawa shogunate consolidated control of the country and set up its government there. Naganobu is speculated to have made the move before Tokugawa Ieyasu's death in 1615,[1] possibly as early as 1605, and may have worked first at Ieyasu's castle in Sunpu Domain (in modern Shizuoka).[2] His workshop in Edo officially served the Tokugawa shogunate under the title goyō eshi [ja] (御用絵師).[1]

Kano Naganobu followed in the footsteps of Kanō Motonobu, Byakue Kannon zu
白衣観音図Kano Motonobu (Japanese, 1476–1559), Japanese Muromachi period first half of the 16th century, was a Japanese painter and calligrapher. He was a member of the Kanō school of painting. Through his political connections, patronage, organization, and influence he was able to make the Kanō school into what it is today. The system was responsible for the training of a great majority of painters throughout the Edo period. After his death, he was referred to as Kohōgen. This work, by the influential Japanese painter Kano Motonobu, projects a very solid, imposing sense of the bodhisattva. Kannon confronts the viewer head-on with an intense gaze. He sits in a symmetrical pose and wears crisply outlined robes. This contrasts with the nebulous, seemingly spontaneous presentation of the bodhisattva attributed to Shugen. Although contemporaries, these two Japanese artists demonstrate how Kannon inspired dramatically differing artistic interpretations in the 16th century.

Unframed: 24” W x 48” H

Given that Chinese traditional painters learned their craft by copying earlier masters, it can be very difficult to distinguish an original from a copy, especially if the work is very old. Even if the artist was not deliberately creating a fake, the copy might have been confused with an original at some point.

Artists use ink and water-based colour on paper or silk to create traditional tableaus, most often depicting landscapes. Additionally, the themes are rarely unique, but are variations of earlier compositions, continuing a solid historical thread. The differences are in the details.

Originally, these paintings were from China and then the Japanese starting painting in this style.
Painted images of the Buddhist deity Kannon wearing white robes and seated on a rocky outcropping emerged in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and became important in the Zen sect of Buddhism before it was introduced to Japan a few hundred years later. Such images refer to a passage from the Avatamsaka Sutra, a sacred Buddhist text that narrates the story of Zenzai Dōji, a boy who sets out on a journey of truth and consults with numerous teachers, Kannon being one of them. Kannon is a bodhisattva, an enlightened being that forgoes Buddhahood in order to assist humans on the path to enlightenment. According to the text, the boy finds Kannon in Fudaraku, the bodhisattva’s paradise, seated on a boulder in a warm, misty locale. The boy’s journey and his encounter with Kannon can be seen as allegories for Zen practice and the path to enlightenment. less