Dogs from Europe

Dogs from Europe (欧州の犬, Ōshū no Inu) is a 1941 hanging-scroll painting by Hashimoto Kansetsu in ink and color on silk, in the collection of the Adachi Museum of Art in Yasugi, Shimane. The painting derives from Kansetsu's repeated travels in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, during which he observed and sketched European working dogs, hunting dogs, and pet breeds far removed from the East Asian dog imagery that had structured nihonga animal painting until then. Like his teacher Takeuchi Seihō, who had brought back European animals as subjects for nihonga after his 1900-1901 trip, Kansetsu used direct observation of unfamiliar Western dogs to expand the vocabulary of his animal painting. The treatment combines the careful Maruyama-Shijō sketching discipline he had absorbed from Seihō with the spare, atmospheric ink wash of his mature kanga-influenced manner. The painting is part of the Adachi Museum's extensive Kansetsu holdings and is one of the more unusual subjects in his late-career production.