Frolicking Figures and Animals

Kawanabe Kyōsai

Trained in the academic Kanō school tradition, Kyōsai became an independent painter in Edo during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate. A prolific painter and teacher, he became well known outside Japan through his prominence at the international expositions at Vienna in 1873 and at Paris in 1883. These charming, quickly rendered sketches were probably done as models for his students. They reveal the animated brushwork and sure command of form through line that marks his painting.