Ebook: Masterpieces from the Shin'enkan Collection: Japanese Painting of the Edo Period

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986. — 139 p. — ISBN-10: 0875871283 / ISBN-13: 978-0875871288.The Shin’enkan Collection is remarkable tor its scholarly depth and for its vibrant beauty. The collection focuses on paintings of the Edo period (1615- 1868), a time ot rich artistic diversity in Japan.The Edo period takes its name from the city of Edo (modern Tokyo), from which the Tokugawa shogunate ruled Japan for nearly 250 years. Tokugawa Ievasu moved the capital from Kyoto to Edo after he was proclaimed the first of the Tokugawa shoguns in 1603. During the Edo period the capital grew as an important commercial and cultural center with a population ot approximately one million residents. The period is noted tor its stable rule and for the emergence of a wealthy middle class, which joined the imperial court, the shogunate, and the feudal lords as patrons of the arts. It was a period in which a wide range of styles coexisted.At the beginning ot this period, the dominant school ot painting was the Kano School, based on Chinese painting techniques combined with Japanese decorative tendencies. But as the period progressed native styles began to emerge. Fostered by the shogunate’s isolationist policies, many artists sought inspiration in earlier Japanese painting styles. As a result, genre painting, the Rimpa Schtxd, and ukiyo-e painting flourished as native expressions of a new vitality and atfluence. The eighteenth century saw the emergence of a new school of painting, the Maruyama-Shijo School, and of individualistic painters who received stimuli trom indigenous styles, Chinese art, and even Western painting.