Painting albums

Japanese painting albums can be divided in three main groups:
- tan-gajo or jiteki-jo: painting albums made by a single artist according to his own insights. Among these are sketchbooks, practise books for pupils and books where the artists shows his accomplishment or oeuvre.
- gassaku-jo or Liber Amicorum: albums by different artist. These contain paintings often in combination with pages of calligraphy by several different artists. Sometimes they belong to same school but more commonly they are from diffent schools or amateur painters and poets from different cultural groups or circles. Often these albums were made for a special occasion such as a cherry blossom viewing or dinnerparty or composed around a special theme.
- shuga-jo: illustrated albums with paintings of different painters and calligraphers brought together by a collector. In some cases the album consists of pasted in drawings. Note that a shuga-jo (written with different kanji) could also be an album of paintings for practise purposes.
The size of the painting albums varies from miniature albums to large size sketchbooks. Some are done in ink only. In others ink and washes of colour were used.