Kanō Naonobu

Kanō Naonobu (born Nov. 25, 1607, Kyōto—died May 7, 1650, Edo [Tokyo]) was a seventh-generation member of the Kanō family of Japanese artists, who served as painter to the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, and founded the Kobikichō branch of the Kanō family.

His paintings are closer to the suiboku-ga (“water-ink painting”) tradition than are the more elaborately detailed paintings of his more famous brother, Tanyū. He was known for his “grass” (sō, a term borrowed from calligraphy, also called “running”) style of brushwork, combining broad, free strokes with a simple ink wash to create an impression of brevity and freshness. Examples of his “grass” style are two screen landscapes in the Tokyo National Museum and the figures of two Chinese brothers Po I and Shu Ch’i painted on screens, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Other paintings, such as the one remaining section of the “Eight Views of the Hsiao and Hsiang Rivers” (Tokyo National Museum), are in subject matter and technique modelled after the work of the early-13th-century Chinese suiboku-ga artist Mu-ch’i Fa-ch’ang.