Beauties Moving from Jiangnan to Edo: Kanō Tan’yū’s Visual Transmission of Chinese Female-Figure Paintings

Abstract

<p>明代中國繪畫傳至日本，成為江戶時代重要的創作素材。江戶早期狩野派畫家狩野探幽經多年蒐集和摹寫，繪製了大量以中國古畫為主的縮小摹本，稱作「探幽縮圖」。用於繪畫素材、鑑定筆記及門派傳承等，影響深遠。中國女性是其中重要題材。基於皆川三知關於「縮圖」中多於107幅「唐美人」圖的統計，本文從中日跨文化角度探討「縮圖」中國仕女圖的摹寫方法、來源和運用，並試論日本江戶時代對中國女性題材繪畫及其作偽的受容。發現「縮圖」多擅仕女畫的明代蘇州「吳門」畫家唐寅、仇英款，也有不長於仕女題材的江南名家如元代趙孟頫、趙雍，指出「蘇州片」為其重要來源。再以耕織圖、西王母圖為案例，探討了跨文化背景下中國女性圖像雜糅及重新詮釋問題。</p> <p> </p><p>"During the Ming dynasty, Chinese paintings were transmitted to Japan and became an essential visual source for Japanese paintings of the Edo period (1615-1867). Kanō Tan’yū (1602-1674), a leading artist of the early Edo Kanō School, spent his lifetime copying numerous earlier Chinese paintings, as well as some Japanese and Korean works. He left thousands of small-sized sketches, called Tan’yū Shukuzu [Tan’yū’s Small Sketches], leaving a lasting impact on the Japanese painting realm. They were made for multiple purposes, as painting models, authentication notes, teaching materials, and a symbol of a painter’s status. Sanko Minagawa’s research survey indicates the existence of more than 107 sketches of Chinese female images, as one of the major subjects, in Tan’yū Shukuzu. </p> <p> This paper focuses on Tan’yū’s copies of Chinese female-figure paintings (often called tobijinzu, “pictures of Chinese beauties,” in Japanese) that were largely overlapped with while beyond the scope of the shinü tu or meiren hua genre (paintings of beautiful ladies) in Chinese art. It discusses the reproduction mechanism of Shukuzu in comparison with the Chinese fenben practice. It also examines the attributed Chinese artists’ signatures copied by Tan’yū in Shukuzu, e.g., Qiu Ying and Tang Yin (famed for beautiful women paintings), Zhao Mengfu and Zhao Yong (no extant authentic female-figure paintings), and it identifies the late Ming Suzhou Pian workshop as an important original Chinese source. It provides a fresh angle to approach the perception of Chinese “forgery” paintings and the long-term use of Shukuzu in re-making and reinterpreting Chinese paintings in Edo Japan from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Through two case studies from a transcultural perspective, it shows the combination of two Chinese pictorial systems, gengzhi tu (Pictures of Tilling and Weaving) and shinü tu, in a Kanō School scroll; and the transformation of the Queen Mother of the West, from a powerful female Daoist immortal signified by peaches of immortality to a secularized beautiful lady holding peach blossoms, in Kanō School paintings. </p> <p> </p>