Samurai Paintings

Samurai Paintings is a section where you can find paintings and artworks depicting Samurai or related to the Samurai culture. Samurai inspired a great number of artists both foreign and Japanese and both modern and of old times. Some of the Samurai paintings would be made in contemporary western style, but a great number would be made in traditional style of Japanese art, regardless of time and origins of artists making these paintings.

Samurai paintings made in traditional Japanese style can be painted on many different types of media. The least common of them though would be common for Westerners framed canvas, which came in popularity in Japan only in the late 19th century. We will list some of the common forms of traditional Japanese paintings here: Kakemono is probably one of the most popular media. The Kakemono means "Thing on the Wall" and it's a vertical scroll with a roller on both ends, with a string attached to one end of the scroll that you can hang it on the wall. Another popular form is Emakimono, which means "Image thing that you can roll", and it is a long scroll made of single sheets connected together; this one is a very old way of doing traditional Japanese paintings. Another style of Samurai paintings you can see is Byobu, or folding screens, which originated in China and came to Japan in the 7th century. Sliding doors (called fusuma) and fans (called uchiwa) are another possible thing where you can find Samurai paintings on.

There were also different painting schools and styles that were used for Japanese traditional paintings. Suibokuga is the style of painting in black ink and it came from China and was strong influenced by Zen Buddhism. The Kano style established by Kano Masanobu and his son Kano Motonobu in 15th and 16th centuries was started as a protest to Chinese paintings in black ink listed above. A sub-style of Kano was the Shijo style, started in 18th century and characterized by not idealized subjects taken from people's everyday life. Yet another style that you can find Samurai paintings made in was Tosa-Ha, which was a painting school specialized on small miniature formats.

Whether you're a collector or just interested in Japanese culture and Samurai, one of the Samurai paintings can be an excellent addition of the Eastern touch to a décor of your house or office.

You can see current listings for Samurai Paintings here: