AGTS of Delaware Valley
Portfolio Print Summary
Print No:
Print Title: Monday Wash Day
Worksheet Updated: 7/14/14
Portfolio #: 21
Included in Portfolio #s:
Artist:(last name, first) Tanobe, Miyuki
Nationality: Japanese
Lifespan:
Birth/Death: 1937
Period/Style: Nihonga
Title of Work: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Date of Work: 1988
Size: 20'x15.9''
Medium: The style of painting Tanobe works with is called Nihonga, an ancient Japanese style
based on the Buddhist religion.
Location: Private Collection
Biographical Highlights: Miyuki Tanobe (born 1937 in Morioka, Japan) is a Japanese-born
Canadian painter, based in Montreal. Miyuki Tanobe was born in 1939 in Japan and is in her late
60’s today. Miyuki was interested in art from the time she was a young girl. When she was 11
she began studying oil painting with very famous art teachers. When she was in High School,
Miyuki began working in watercolors.
After she went to college in Tokyo, Japan, Miyuki began studying a painting style called
NIHONGA. This technique is an ancient Japanese painting style based on the Buddhist religion.
The artist uses a mixture of hand-ground powdered pigments (that makes color), sand, glue,
water and blank ink which they apply to canvas or rice paper with a special brush. Traditionally
the artists or "Masters" as they are called in Japan, paint with their canvases on the floor often
causing them to eventually lose the use of their legs and end up wheel-chair bound!
Mikuki studied art for many years in Japan and Paris . When she was 24 she went to Europe to
tour museums in France, Italy, Egypt, Switzerland & Greece. She later moved to Canada where
she was married and where she still paints today!
In addition to being a painter, Miyuki illustrates books, and she has even designed a 50cent coin
for the Royal Mint of Canada. The coin she created is based on an old Canadian Legend Les
Petits Sauteux. This legend tells of treasure lost when a ship that was carrying it ran aground.
The story goes that the treasure was protected by the souls of the crew embodied by leprechaunlike beings. The coin shows these little leprechauns dancing in the moonlight on a shore. (Show
pictures on page A)
Miyuki's painting style is very simple and humorous. She carries around a little sketchbook and
is constantly doing little sketches of every day life around Canada. She never paints directly from
nature, instead, her paintings are completed in her studio from these sketches she draws. She
often paints neighborhoods, especially their children, going about their day-to-day business.
Famous Works:
Miyuki Tanobe’s work reflects a freedom of action. She paints principally on rigid supports such
as wood or masonite sheets. Her panels are filled with scenes that she has observed [3] like
children playing hockey.[4]
Her modern primitive works depict everyday life in the working class neighborhoods of
Montreal with humour and great sensitivity.[5] She transforms “humble and unavoidable reality”
by reformulating it, adding or deleting elements depending on her assessment of their
contribution to the scene. A painting by Miyuki Tanobe goes to the heart of the matter: the artist
is interested in opening the viewers' eyes so that they may better see the familiar and adjust their
perceptions of what they think they know.
In 1980 Tanobe illustrates the song "Gens de mon pays" by Gilles Vigneault[6] and in 1983 she
creates pictures for The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy.[7] The colours in Miyuki’s paintings are
rich and full of contrast. Working with superimposed layers and applying pigments with her
pliable, flexible Japanese brush, Miyuki Tanobe succeeds in revealing unexpected aspects of the
objects and people she depicts without making them difficult to read.[8] She paints in
Nihonga.[9]
Miyuki Tanobe has exhibited her work at Galerie Jean-Pierre Valentin in Montreal since 1972.
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has one very large painting by Tanobe, as does the Musée du
Québec, the Musée de Joliette and the Saidye Bronfman Museum in Montreal. Her work can be
found in corporate collections, including Lavalin, Pratt & Whitney, Shell Canada, and Selection
du Reader’s Digest. She is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[10]
In 2012 a mural was painted for Tanobe in Verdun.[11]