Page 361 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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Ganku (1749 or 1756-1838)
Rooster and Banana
1781
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
125.6x56.5 (4972x2274)
Tóyama Memorial Museum, Saitama

• In this depiction of a colorful
rooster pecking at a large grasshopper
in the shade of an enormous and
somewhat menacing banana plant,
36o
Ganku shows off his mastery of broad
brushwork combined with fine detail.
The banana leaves were painted with
a wide, flat brush and no outline—
the so-called boneless technique-
using monochrome ink and an expen-
sive green pigment, while the veins
were rendered skillfully with precise
parallel lines using a conventional
brush. The feathers of the rooster,
exquisitely detailed, form a bold
visual contrast with the roughly de-
fined foliage. Ganku claims in the
inscription to be following the style of
the tenth-century Sichuanese bird-
and-flower painter Huang Chuan. But
the green moss dots give away his
indebtedness to a more recent influ-
ence, namely the naturalistic work
of the Chinese émigré painter Shen
Chuan, who brought the academic
styles of the Ming and Qing court to
Japan in the 17303. Ganku painted
this work in 1781.
Considerable confusion surrounds
Ganku's biography. Born in Kanazawa,
he moved to Kyoto sometime around
1780 and entered the service of a
court noble. He received a court rank
(see cat. 206), but his duties must
not have been too arduous, for he
seems to have had ample time for
painting. He experimented with vari-
ous realistic modes, including Kano-
and Maruyama-school painting, then
eventually founded the Ganku school,
similar in its poetic naturalism to
the Shijó school of his friend Goshun.
Ganku was famous above all for his
paintings of tigers. MT

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