Kano Hogai
A Nihonga painter born into a family of official painters of the Chofu domain (now Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture). Though impoverished in the Meiji era, he explored a new Nihonga with Fenollosa and Okakura Tenshin. His last work, "Merciful Mother Kannon," is an Important Cultural Property.
Kano Hogai was born in 1828 (Bunsei 11), the eldest son of Kano Seiko, an official painter serving the Chofu domain in Nagato Province. After studying painting with his father, he went to Edo in 1846 (Koka 3) and became a pupil of Kano Shosenin Masanobu of the Kano school. Among his fellow pupils was Hashimoto Gaho, later a leader of modern Nihonga.
After losing his domain stipend in the abolition of the domains in 1871 (Meiji 4), he lived in hardship in Tokyo, painting designs for ceramics and the like. In 1884 (Meiji 17) a work he showed at an exhibition caught the eye of the American Fenollosa, who was studying Japanese art. Through him he also became close to Okakura Tenshin, and on the basis of Kano-school brushwork worked at making a new Nihonga that took in the color and spatial expression of Western painting. "Fudo Myoo" of 1886 (Meiji 19) is also an Important Cultural Property.
"Merciful Mother Kannon" (1888, Meiji 21; The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts) shows Kannon floating in the sky pouring pure water from a vase, with an infant being born, wrapped in a ring of light, below her. Hogai also gave his all to preparing for the opening of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, but in November 1888 (Meiji 21), just after finishing this picture, he died before the school opened. After Hogai's death, Hashimoto Gaho took charge of Nihonga instruction at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts.
