JAPANESE HANGING SCROLL: Antique Makuri "Hawk with Maple Leaves", 1600's

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JAPANESE HANGING SCROLL: Antique Makuri "Hawk with Maple Leaves", 1600's If you set your monitor at FULL SCREEN from TOOLS you will be better able to view the photos This is a venerable and quite beautiful Makuri, a painting which was never mounted to a Hanging Scroll. It is by an artist of the Kano school from the 1600's. The artist has given us a wonderful representation of a Hawk perched on a rock outcropping, framed by some scarlet maple leaves. The use of this color and some green on the underside of the rock to indicate moss is slightly unusual for such an early Knako-ha painting. The Kano school is one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting. It was founded by Kano Masanobu (1434-1530), a contemporary of Sesshu and student of Shubun . Kano painters often composed very flat pictures but they balanced impeccably detailed realistic depictions of animals and other subjects in the foreground with abstract, often entirely blank, clouds and other background elements. The use of negative space to indicate distance, and to imply mist, clouds, sky or sea is drawn from traditional Chinese modes and is used beautifully by the Kano artists. Our present painting is a perfect example of Kano-ha painting. The Hawk, rock and maple branches are all rendered with amazing verisimilitude, but the rest of the picture surface is left blank to imply the space in which the scene takes place . The Hawk is known to be a clever and powerful bird. Many Japanese artists of the Edo period created their works for powerful men — the wealthy and mighty nobility and samurai who ruled Japan. These men saw themselves in the hawk and his ruthless strength. Some samurai trained hawks as hunting birds or kept them as symbols of military might. They avidly collected paintings of hawks to decorate their homes and to remind their guests, retainers and even their families that they themselves should be treated with the fear and respect that they imagined plagued the prey of these strong predators. I have mounted the painting to a PH neutral board with archival tape and given it a medium brown mat. The image measures 32 1/4 inches long and 19 7/8 inches wide. The mat is 2 inches all around. There is no serious damage ot the painting at all. There are a few scuffs here and there, but none of them pierce the paper nor do they affect the aesthetic integrity of the image . The photos give an excellent idea of of this venerable paiting by an artist of the Kano school from the 1600's. If you should have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. And thanks for looking . This painting is around 360 or so years old and has passed through many difficult times including two World Wars, the second of which was disastrous for its native country. For an unframed work on such a delicate support as paper, it is remarkable that it has survived at all, let alone in such good condition. But this painting and similar works of art are not in absolutely perfect condition and they frequently show evidence of their long life. I endeavor to point out if and where there may be any damage, but the photographs tell the whole story. Please examine them carefully. If you are looking for something with absolutely no signs of age, I am afraid you will have to look elsewhere. In short, these beautiful paintings were not born yesterday. I indicate the artist's name based on a signature and seal and also the style, but occasionally a scroll may be a copy of a work by a famous painter. In the present case, I am unable to identify the artist Due to limitations of photography and the inevitable differences in monitor settings, the color of the pictures on your monitor may be slightly different from the scroll itself, but I did my best to capture it as it is. And, at least on my monitor, the color is an perfect match . Winning Bidders: please pay for your item within three days of this auction's close. Foreign Buyers: please request an in... read more

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