Mount Fuji

Artist Kano Tan'yu (Japanese, 1602 – 1674)

Authenticator Ōkura Kōsai (Japanese, 1795 – 1862)

Date1668

PeriodEdo period (1615–1868)

CultureJapanese

Mediumink and light colors on paper

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Carol B. Davenport, 2018

Object numberSN11621.1

This set of paintings depicts three famous locales in Japan. The central scroll features Mount Fuji, Japan’s highest peak, under a heavy cap of snow. The artist, Kan ō Tan’yu, painted Fuji at least 27 times from the 1660s, thereby establishing the mountain as a principal subject of Japanese landscape painting. Fuji towers above Mount Yoshino, depicted blooming with cherry blossoms on the right, and the Tatsuda River in autumn color on the left. Executed in subtle ink wash and light colors, the paintings are a fine example of Tan’yu’s synthesis of suibokuga (monochrome ink wash painting) and the nativist yamato-e styles. Tan’yu was the head of the Edo (present-day Tokyo) branch of the Kan ō lineage of painters, and the first official painter to the Tokugawa military government.

On View

Not on view

Collections