Plum Tree and Waterfowl

Kano Masanobu 狩野正信

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A pair of water birds glide beneath the fragile branches of a plum tree in this work bearing the seals of Kano Masanobu, founder of the Kano school of painting, which dominated mainstream Japanese painting for four centuries. The plum tree’s delicate white blossoms and a tangle of drying reeds in the lower left corner are indicative of late winter. As with many other early Kano-school paintings in the bird-and-flower genre, each of the motifs is drawn with black ink outlines, while ink washes and accents are used to suggest the texture of the tree’s bark, to which malachite green lichens cling. The birds’ downy bodies are described with a meticulous application of shell white (gofun), the same pigment used for the petals of the plum blossoms.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art