Artworks

The Barrel-maker

Artwork · Shiba Kōkan · c. 1789 · kakemono

An oil painting by Shiba Kōkan (1738/47–1818), who trained with a Kanō master and with the bird-and-flower painter Sō Shiseki, imitated Harunobu’s prints and, through Hiraga Gennai and the Chinese and Dutch books the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune had again allowed into Japan, devoted himself to Western techniques (yōfūga): a man in Western dress hammers a barrel, the buildings and figures diminishing along a diagonal into depth. Heavy-handed to modern eyes, but the first step towards Western-style painting in Japan. 1 Mason 2005, pp. 318–319, fig. 370. ↩ Literatur Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.