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<\/a><\/p>\nThis year\u2019s focus will be on landscapes: dramatic, idealized, existing and imagined. They all gravitate
\naround the stylistic ideals of Literati painters from the 18th through to the early 20th centuries.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s Literati painters (also known as Nanga or Bunjinga) tried to emulate Chinese scholarly paintings for their ideal of art for art sake, rather than art for mere decoration or profit. Although travel to China was initially forbidden, Woodblock printed books, collections of Chinese paintings within temples, and the occasional itinerant Chinese painter served as educators for this style. In keeping with the principal of the scholar-recluse, they generally declined to serve the samurai class, and instead eking out their living through patronage from educated merchants and farmers. and in the early Meiji period to the new government leaders. They often painted for each other and prided themselves on being intellectuals, poets, tea masters, raconteurs, as well as painters.<\/p>\n