Kanō Eitoku

Timeline

1. 1543–1575Kyoto · KyotoEldest son of Kanō Shōei and grandson of Motonobu, he studied Chinese-style painting and Yamato-e in the Kyoto family atelier. Around 1566 he collaborated with his father on the wall paintings of Shūkō-in at Daitoku-ji. The Uesugi version of the Rakuchū rakugai zu screen, completed in 1574, is traditionally held to be his gift to Oda Nobunaga, later passed to Uesugi Kenshin, and already shows grand composition and observation of urban customs.
2. 1576–1582Azuchi Castle · AzuchiHe was commissioned to direct the wall paintings on every level of Azuchi Castle's keep, with subjects including flowers and birds, stories of sages, and gold-and-green decoration, recorded in the Shinchō kōki and other sources. The works were almost entirely lost when the castle burned in 1582, yet they established the gold-and-green style of grand Azuchi-Momoyama painting, making the Kanō school the visual official language of the unified regime.
3. 1583–1590Kyoto · KyotoHe then directed gold-and-green wall paintings for Toyotomi Hideyoshi at Osaka Castle, Jurakudai, and elsewhere, expanding his workshop and adopting Kimura Kōjō, later Kanō Sanraku. He died of illness in 1590 while working on the ceiling paintings of the hattō at Tōfuku-ji, aged about forty-eight. The monumental gold-and-green paintings of Azuchi-Momoyama were carried on by disciples and his adopted son into the early Edo period.