Enjoy the summery scenes on fan paintings from the Chinese and Japanese reserve collection.
Shiba Kōkan began his career as a painter working in the Kanō style and later studied with Sō Shiseki, who specialized in realistic Chinese-style bird-and-flower paintings. Kōkan was fascinated by Western science and painting techniques, learning from books acquired from the Dutch in Nagasaki, and taught himself how to make copper-plate engravings. After observing insects through a microscope, a rarity in Japan at the time, he wrote ‘all creatures on earth, even the tiniest insects have nerves, ears, eyes and limbs, just as humans have’.
Hillier, J., The Harari Collection of Japanese Paintings and Drawings, copyright owned by Michael Harari, 3 vols (London: Lund Humphries, 1973), no. 312 on p. 544, illus. p. 545 fig. 312
Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.
Objects from past exhibitions may have now returned to our stores or a lender. Click into an individual object record to confirm whether or not an object is currently on display. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis, so please contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular Eastern Art object.
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