The Four Seasons, 1668. Kano Tan’yū (Japanese, 1602-1674). Six-panel folding screen, ink and slight color on paper; image: 174 x 381 cm (68 1/2 x 150 in.). Tan'y?'s skills were honed early within the regimen of the Kano family's painting studio. His grandfather, Eitoku (1543–1590) was the Momoyama period's most sought-after painter, a champion of colorful, large-scale painting compositions who worked for several of the country's most powerful leaders. When the young Tan'y? was summoned to Edo in 1617 by the shogun to become a member of the new capital's official painting studio, few opportuni

The Four Seasons, 1668. Kano Tan’yū (Japanese, 1602-1674). Six-panel folding screen, ink and slight color on paper; image: 174 x 381 cm (68 1/2 x 150 in.). Tan'y?'s skills were honed early within the regimen of the Kano family's painting studio. His grandfather, Eitoku (1543–1590) was the Momoyama period's most sought-after painter, a champion of colorful, large-scale painting compositions who worked for several of the country's most powerful leaders. When the young Tan'y? was summoned to Edo in 1617 by the shogun to become a member of the new capital's official painting studio, few opportunities to work on similarly ambitious projects existed. Yet by the end of his career, Tan'y? had supervised the execution and installation of linked mural painting compositions in several of Japan's most prestigious residences and castles. As an official court painter to the first shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu (reigned 1603–5), and then his successors, Tan'y? appears to have successfully juggled his official duties with private activities as a teacher, as the era's leading connoisseur of classic Chinese and Japanese painting, and as a practicing artist. His surviving compositions as well as thousands of sketches far surpass the oeuvre of any of his contemporaries. While studio assistants surely contributed to his oeuvre, just as later imitators consciously confused his accomplishments, a clearer image of the painter has emerged in recent years that better conforms with his contemporary acclaim as recorded in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents. Tan'y? can now be seen as an artist adept in virtually all traditional ink painting subject matter, which he often presented in novel interpretations. Equally important are his rare screen (by?bu) compositions executed in a pure yamato-e manner with vivid mineral pigments on a gold-foil background. This pair of by?bu presents Tan'y?'s more orthodox approach to academic ink painting methods embracing Chinese themes that had been

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