About the artist:

Tsurusawa Tansaku was the third-generation head of the Tsurusawa school of painting (a branch off of the Kano school) and the son of Tsurusawa Tangei (1687 -1769), placing him in the lineage of the great Kano Tan'yu, who his grandfather apprenticed under. This also puts him in the direct lineage of the very long-lived Kano Masanobu (1434 - 1530), who founded the school. The Japanese art historian, Robert Treat Paine, wrote, "another family in which direct blood line produced so many men of genius...would be hard to find."