Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection

Gallery view of the special exhibition Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection.

Painting Edo — the largest exhibition ever presented at the Harvard Art Museums — offers a window onto the supremely rich visual culture of Japan’s early modern era. Selected from the unparalleled collection of Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg, the more than 120 works in the exhibition connect visitors with a seminal moment in the history of Japan, as the country settled into an era of peace under the warrior government of the shoguns and opened its doors to greater engagement with the outside world. The dizzying array of artistic lineages and studios active during the Edo period (1615–1868) fueled an immense expansion of Japanese pictorial culture that reverberated not only at home, but subsequently in the history of painting in the West. In an act of extraordinary generosity, the Feinbergs have promised their collection of more than three hundred works to the Harvard Art Museums.

Professional Amateurism
Chinese-style literati ink painting—anchored in an amateur aesthetic of personal cultivation rather than commercial gain—was introduced to the Japanese archipelago in the 18th century and enthusiastically domesticated. While early practitioners had to look largely to printed painting manuals for guidance, 19th-century painters benefited from increased access to original paintings and books on painting theory and practice. Works by later artists incorporate legible references to the brushwork and compositions of their well-known Chinese predecessors. Although literati painting had in fact been professionalized early on in China and Korea, in Japan it was adopted from the outset as a painting style rather than a way of life. In the competitive artistic environment of 19th-century Japan, literati painters increasingly adopted and synthesized the popular decorative strategies of professionals working in the Maruyama-Shijō style (see Expansion of Pictorial Culture).