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The Kano school must figure in any discussion of the training of Edo-period painters,particularly in regard to funpon and copybook method.Whether the preparatory ground for future Kano school painters or for those who forged independent lineages, Kano pedagogy shaped numerous painters’ understanding of the craft of painting.Yet the act of copying a master’s work was a training method common to many Japanese artistic media.In painting,the use of copying was ultimately based on Chinese practice, and the literati— who worked in a Chinese-derived style—employed copying and copybooks to train painters.Like their Kano counterparts,Japanese literati painters used models to learn a canon of proper brushwork and composition.Where the Kano relied on copybooks to maintain high, school-defined standards and stylistic identity across a huge network of primary and regional teaching studios, the literati artists emphasized the learning of form as a structural stepping stone to the establishment of an artist’s independent style.The late Edo- and Meiji-period literati artist Okuhara Seiko (1837–1913) is a case in point. Copybook training by a Bunchò-trained regional painter linked Seiko to Tani Bunchò’s artistic lineage. As discussed in chapter 3, Bunchò learned to paint in a Kano studio and then went on to teach his own students from an eclectic collection of models reflecting his personal stylistic predilections .Seiko’s teacher,Hirata Suiseki (1796–1863),was one of the hundreds 116 Chapter 5 Okuhara Seiko A C A S E O F F U N P O N T R A I N I N G I N L AT E E D O L I T E R AT I PA I N T I N G M A RT H A J . M C C L I N T O C K A N D V I C T O R I A W E S T O N of minor pupils taught by Bunchò. Seiko, in turn, learned how to paint in the roughly grouped “literati” styles deemed acceptable to Bunchò and went on to use funpon as she taught students from her own selection of Bunchò’s preferred styles. Seiko’s considerable fame as a painter during the Meiji period (1868–1912) was based on her distinctive stylistic élan, both in painting and lifestyle. The basis for her artistic philosophy was Bunchò’s determined emphasis on developing a carefully formed style from a wide array of models,and her own brushwork developments placed her firmly in the ranks of the centuries-old literati tradition. Seiko’s oeuvre demonstrates how copybook method worked in a literati,rather than Kano school,artistic career. Seiko’s reliance on a specific and relatively narrow range of compositional types attests to the maintenance of stylistic tradition, while her focused and lifelong development of brushwork sensibilities is testament to the literati imperative to personal expression. Seiko’s desire for a painting career, and the training which made such a dream possible,helped her subvert the rigid gender roles of late Edo-period samurai-class women.As the daughter of a high-ranking clan official,Seiko’s normal destiny would have been a politically advantageous marriage. Literati painting was one of many art forms ornamenting elite samurai life; Seiko transformed a class avocation into a tool for independence. As a young woman of high birth, Seiko could not pursue her early artistic interest in one of the apprenticeship situations open to all but the highest ranked men of her day.Instead, her private training with a painter attendant to her clan lord allowed her access to otherwise unavailable artistic traditions. Copying her teacher’s funpon brought her into the centuries-old realm of literati composition and brushstroke. Her teacher’s funpon were drawn from ancient Chinese painting models and those of his contemporaries in the capital . Seiko learned from both the old and the new, while also studying the classical literature and calligraphy that rounded out the Edo-period concept of a formal literati education. After this educational preparation in her regional hometown, Seiko moved to Edo, where she established herself as both an extraordinarily popular painter and a successful teacher, formally opening her studio to both live-in deshi and a host of day students. Given our understanding of her own training—and her extant collection of carefully organized funpon and copybooks—we can posit that Seiko trained her students through specifically selected funpon, thus validating...

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