Attributed to Kano Motonobu 狩野元信 (1476–1559)
Fishing Village in Evening Glow
Item number: T-1515Size: H 60.6" x W 58.3" (154,5 x 148,5 cm)
Age: 17th C
Hanging scroll; ink on paper.
Seal and inscriptions:
Seal: Motonobu 元信
Outer box inscription: »Landscape by the brush
of Motonobu« 山水元信筆
Inner box inscription: »A wonderful object: an ink
landscape by the Kohōgen [Kano Motonobu]1«
古法眼水墨山水妙品. Lengthy biographic inscription
inside box cover.
In the mountains, a fishing village appears by the shore, fishing boats float on the lake, and villagers walk back toward their home. The painter has depicted an idyllic scene in the mountains, far from the bustle of the metropolitan centers. By skillfully varying the tonalities of his ink washes, he has created a sense of deep space and even of the relative distances of the far-away peaks. Details are mostly done in darker tones, and delineate the houses and activities of the fishers and villagers; even several types of trees within the village are carefully differentiated.
This subtle work does not depict a generic mountain scene, but rather one with a specific meaning, derived from older Chinese poetry and painting traditions. This is, in fact, one of the eight views of the Xiao and Xian rivers, a location in the Hunan Province of China, where the two rivers join and flow together into Lake Dongting. This stretch has been a famous area since antiquity for its exquisite scenery.
Landscape of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers are thought to have first been painted as a set of eight scenes in the mid-11th century by the Northern Song painter Song Di. The eight scenes were entitled Wild Geese Descending to Sandbar, Returning Sails off a Distant Coast, Mountain Market in Clearing Mist, River and Sky in Evening Snow, Autumn Moon over Dongting Lake, Night Rain on the Xiao and Xiang, Evening Bell from Mist-Shrouded Temple, and Fishing Village in the Evening Glow. Since then, the poetry and the painting pertaining to this site have traditionally been done in sets of eight with the above titles. The painting before us describes the Fishing Village in the Evening Glow and was likely conceived as a set of eight works.
The format and size of this painting are also influenced by history. The earliest examples of the Eight Views to come to Japan were thought to be in handscroll format, and of these, sets attributed to Yujian and Muqi survive. These handscrolls were divided and mounted into sets of eight separate hanging scrolls at the command of Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), whose seal of ownership appears on the scrolls. These were large handscrolls and hence the hanging scrolls were of considerable size. They were fitted into the alcoves of the powerful of the realm and were viewed, at privileged occasions, as pinnacles of Chinese paintings existing in Japan. Due to their fame and desirability, later painters catering to the powerful and famous, such as the heads of the Kano schools, created ink paintings in the same size and format as these large handscroll sections. In other words, the present painting aligns not only with the subject matter of these Chinese predecessors, but also with their size and format.
Is this a painting by Kano Motonobu? Probably not, although its many owners certainly seem to have thought so. The painting comes in a double box, the inner from mid-Edo period and the outer from the early twentieth century. Both carry inscriptions that emphasize this work as that of Motonobu. And, in fact, the criteria on which such decisions were made have shifted greatly over the last century. In looking at the Motonobu paintings and seals illustrated in early twentieth-century publications, one is struck with the inclusiveness of the concept of Motonobu.2 The number and variety of seals accepted today has gone down drastically, but no one dares say that these are the last words on the subject.3
Rather, the questions should be directed at the painting before us. An object out of the seventeenth century, it was carefully created by a competent artist, who was keenly aware of historical precedents and poetic meanings. It was created for an important client, who could show such a work in his or her large alcove, and it has been passed down from generation to generation as an object worthy of veneration. At some point along the way, somebody pressed a spurious seal of Motonobu on the work—this may have been the act of an overzealous owner, connoisseur, or later Kano painter, trying to complete in visual terms what they believed to be the true circumstances of the painting, thinking that surely, a painting this good must come from the brush of Motonobu. To think of this work in terms of the dichotomy of forgery or genuine misses the point: the work stands before us and demands to be heard on its own terms, as a masterpiece of an anonymous Kano-school painter of the 17th century.
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