Fishing in the Moonlight, Tani Kankan

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Tani Kankan was one of the most famous women painters of the Edo period (1600-1868). Married at an early age to the literati artist, Tani Bunchō, she also became a painting student of his. Although her earlier style is primarily derived from his, she soon developed her own distinctive approach.

Tani Kankan is said to have painted the Buddhist deity, Kannon, every day during the last four years of her life. However only one of these devotional works is known to exist; the majority of her paintings are landscapes. Here, she has taken a standard literati theme, the fisher in a boat, and given it a new interpretation. The fisher is usually a non-individualized male figure, often seen from a distance. This depiction of a woman suggests that Tani Kankan, like some other literati artists, may have communed with nature by imagining herself in her landscape paintings.