Nanga: Literati Painting in Japan

In the 1700s, the Japanese government loosened restrictions on importing Chinese books—including manuals on painting. For the first time in 200 years, Japanese artists had new Chinese paintings at their fingertips.

Japanese artists were particularly drawn to Chinese paintings by amateurs. China had a long celebrated amateur painters—statesmen and other learned men who devoted their private lives to artistic pursuits like poetry, painting, and calligraphy. This lineage of amateur painters was known as the Southern School, or Nanga in Japanese.

Gion Nankai was one of these Japanese artists. Once a successful Confucian teacher, he was called out for "misbehavior" and exiled for 10 years. During this time he intensely studied Chinese painting by looking at painting manuals.

Subsequent generations of Japanese Nanga painters were not necessarily amateurs; many of them made a living off their art. Nevertheless the ideal of the amateur painter remained central to their practice.