Animal, Bird, Insect, Fish

The newest volume in the traditional patterns series, which includes Wave, Cloud, Pine and Flower, Bird, this book features animal paintings from the Edo period (1603 to 1868) and numerous surviving masterpieces from the modern history of painting. The Shosoin, a former repository of the Todaiji temple in Nara, has been described as the end of the Silk Road. Its collections of art and craft treasures come from as far as Persia and include many graceful images of winged beasts, lions, elephants, and camels, as well as beloved creatures like small animals, insects, and fish, which appear on the faces of those treasures. In Japan, animal patterns first appear on bronze bell-shaped vessels or mirrors in the Yayoi period (500 B.C.–300 A.D.) Since then, cranes, turtles, deer, rabbits, insects, and other charming animals have become favored motifs associated with good fortune in East Asian animism. But the Japanese art scene underwent a big change during the eighteenth century. Shen Nanpin, a Chinese bird-and-flower painter, brought his technique of meticulous depiction to Nagasaki in 1731. His drawing of the thin and translucent flower petals looks real enough to touch. The new style instantly spread throughout Japan. Maruyama Okyo (1733–1795) incorporated many elements of the new style and developed his own innovative paintings, which emphasize both a decorative nature and an attention to realism.