SEIYOU GADAN　西洋画談

KEY WORD :　 art history / paintings

Lit. Discussion of Western Painting, Shiba Koukan's 司馬江漢 (1747-1818) slim theoretical work in praise of Western naturalism. Published in 1799 (Kansei 寛政 10), SEIYOU GADAN deprecates Japanese and Chinese painting for their inferior technique and subjective impressionism, while it lauds Western art for its ability to capture the reality of objects. Koukan specifies that ability to represent reality is the result of shading and color gradation as well as attention to detail. Koukan further maintains that the primary goal of art is to be useful, and that this utilitarianism can only be achieved by realistic representation. Koukan's view that painting should be a document of the real world is close to slightly earlier texts on Western painting such as Satake Shozan's 佐竹曙山 (1748-85) *GAHOU KOURYOU 画法綱領 (Summary of Painting Laws, 1778) and Honda Toshiaki's 本多利明 (1744-1821) SAIIKI MONOGATARI 西域物語 (Tale of the West, 1798). SEIYOU GADAN is largely polemical, mixing exhortations about the superiority of Western realistic painting with anecdotes about Kokan's own experience studying Dutch books, copperplates, and viewing paintings. One short section on technique explains shading, but the text also mentions two books to be published in the future which will focus on copperplates and Western drawing. Much of the information in SEIYOU GADAN is repeated in SEIYOU GAHOU 西洋画法 (Laws of Western Painting), published as part of ORANDA TSUUHAKU 和蘭通舶 (Dutch Navigation) in 1805.

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