Masters of Mercy in Washington

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The New York Sun

Starting tomorrow at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian, paintings by an important 19th century Japanese master appear in the United States for the first time.

“In early 1854, just as American Commodore Matthew Perry’s ships steamed into Edo Bay to persuade Japan to open its ports to the world, the esteemed painter Kano Kazunobu received a commission from a highly respected Buddhist temple located in the heart of Edo,” says the museum. “His mission was to create 100 paintings on a wildly popular theme of the day–the lives and deeds of the Buddha’s 500 disciples, known in Japan as rakan.

“At the time of the commission, Kazunobu was a mature and important painter working in one of the richest artistic environments of any era in Japan, among several generations of artists of remarkable sophistication and accomplishment. For his larger-than-life subjects, he created huge paintings measuring 4 feet by 10 feet fully mounted. Designed in pairs, each pair features 10 disciples–500 in all–captured in a sensational and daring “tabloid” style.

“The exhibition features 56 paintings from Kazunobu’s epic series, created between 1854 and 1863 for the Pure Land Buddhist temple of Zōjōji. Little-known and never before displayed outside Japan, the series was on view for the first time to the modern general public in a widely hailed exhibition held at the Edo-Tokyo Museum in the spring of 2011.”

Masters of Mercy: Buddha’s Amazing Disciples” runs through July 8 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 1050 Independence Avenue S.W., Washington, D.C., 202-633-1000, asia.si.edu.

Franklin Einspruch is the art critic for The New York Sun. He blogs at Artblog.net.


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