The Barrel-Maker


The Barrel-Maker By: Shiba Kokan
This painting by Shiba Kokan was done in 1789. It is a hanging scroll done with oil paint on silk. Kokan was born in 1747 in Edo. He was taught painting early on in his career in the Kano tradition of Painting. He later became the pupil of So Shiseki who taught a Chinese-style bird and flower painting that Penelope Mason writes was the “hyper-realistic tradition of the Song dynasty.” At this time Kokan also became acquainted with an artist by the name of Hiraga Gennai who is credited as being the first person to popularize yofuga (western-style painting) in Japan. Kokan continued doing wood block prints and other more traditional types of painting but he began to learn and use western techniques in his painting. Kokan was drawn to the western style because he believed that there was no way to paint reality in the Japanese style. He wrote, “Japanese and Chinese paintings are like toys and are not of much practical use. Western painters use light and shade to express contrasting effects – smoothness and roughness, distance and proximity, depth and shallowness.
	Kokan’s painting the Barrel-Maker, which the art historian Michael Sullivan calls “curious” was based on a small engraving from the book, lets Voor Allen. The translation of the title of this Dutch book is ‘Something for Everyone’ and it is “a collection of moral precepts applied to various occupations of Europeans.” Kokan used many illustrations from this book as models for larger oil paintings that he did. Cal French, a Kokan scholar, states that Kokan’s practice of using small images to create larger works “resulted in inconsistencies in both human proportions and spatial relationships.” In Kokan’s version of the barrel-maker he reversed the background buildings, rearranged the figures and added a tree to the foreground. He defines the foreground of the painting by placing a number of objects in large scale at the bottom of the painting. He creates the illusion of depth by placing progressively smaller boards towards the back of the painting. The low-background landscape in the painting also helps to create the illusion of depth.
The figures in Kokan’s paintings are made of a series of geometric cubes. They are defined by their blocky torso, thick, truncated legs and profiled feet. The figures in the Barrel-Maker more so than in Kokan’s other oil paintings “manage to express plausible action.” Stephanie Johnson, Art 260, Spring 2005

The Barrel-Maker

By: Shiba Kokan

This painting by Shiba Kokan was done in 1789. It is a hanging scroll done with oil paint on silk. Kokan was born in 1747 in Edo. He was taught painting early on in his career in the Kano tradition of Painting. He later became the pupil of So Shiseki who taught a Chinese-style bird and flower painting that Penelope Mason writes was the “hyper-realistic tradition of the Song dynasty.” At this time Kokan also became acquainted with an artist by the name of Hiraga Gennai who is credited as being the first person to popularize yofuga (western-style painting) in Japan. Kokan continued doing wood block prints and other more traditional types of painting but he began to learn and use western techniques in his painting. Kokan was drawn to the western style because he believed that there was no way to paint reality in the Japanese style. He wrote, “Japanese and Chinese paintings are like toys and are not of much practical use. Western painters use light and shade to express contrasting effects – smoothness and roughness, distance and proximity, depth and shallowness.

Kokan’s painting the Barrel-Maker, which the art historian Michael Sullivan calls “curious” was based on a small engraving from the book, lets Voor Allen. The translation of the title of this Dutch book is ‘Something for Everyone’ and it is “a collection of moral precepts applied to various occupations of Europeans.” Kokan used many illustrations from this book as models for larger oil paintings that he did. Cal French, a Kokan scholar, states that Kokan’s practice of using small images to create larger works “resulted in inconsistencies in both human proportions and spatial relationships.” In Kokan’s version of the barrel-maker he reversed the background buildings, rearranged the figures and added a tree to the foreground. He defines the foreground of the painting by placing a number of objects in large scale at the bottom of the painting. He creates the illusion of depth by placing progressively smaller boards towards the back of the painting. The low-background landscape in the painting also helps to create the illusion of depth.

The figures in Kokan’s paintings are made of a series of geometric cubes. They are defined by their blocky torso, thick, truncated legs and profiled feet. The figures in the Barrel-Maker more so than in Kokan’s other oil paintings “manage to express plausible action.”

Stephanie Johnson, Art 260, Spring 2005