The concept of ‘art’ in the Japanese art history writing from artist lineages to the nineteenth-century Western model

Abstract

Abstract In this paper would like to follow the notion of ‘Japan’ and ‘art’ in connection with three significant writings on ‘Japanese painting’ and ‘Japanese art’. The ‘Collection on painting’, completed in 1623 by Kanou Ikkei (1599–1662), is a ‘discourse on painting’, which follows a traditional Chinese genre: writings on painting theory, criticism, principles or classification, also including books on painting subjects, history and biographies of painters. Ikkei in his work, which was completed shortly after the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate at the beginning of the 17th century, introduced Chinese painting theory and Chinese painting subjects. Ikkei in his later work, in the ‘Collection of young trees of painting’, completed around 1655 – when Japan already closed its borders –, recorded the biographies of 153 Japanese painters. This work can be considered the first book on ‘Japanese painting’, however at that time the concept of ‘Japanese art’ was not established yet. The Japanese term meani...