VICTORIA.- The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria has one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese artwork in Canada and one of the finest in North America. From this collection, two exhibitions on view this spring. Each one showcases not only rare and beautiful artwork, but tells the stories of the historical context of the works.

Nanga: Literati Painting of Old Japan is titled for the nanga painting style, a major artistic movement that took Japan by storm in the 18th century. Nanga originated as Chinese-inspired painting but transformed into a new and distinctive Japanese form of art.

“Like the Chinese painters they modelled their work after, they were anti-establishment painters,” explains Barry Till, AGGV Curator of Asian Art. “They had idealistic and romantic views of the world and strove to the Chinese lofty quietude, yet each of these artists possessed his own style in accordance to his temperament.”

Nanga often features landscapes with figures, trees and flowers. The works also typically are inscribed with a poem, an act adopted from the Chinese. Nanga runs April 9 to June 26, 2016.

Till has also curated an impressive exhibition of artwork from the AGGV’s collection of prints from Meiji, Japan. The prints, which tell the story of Meiji’s incredible modernization, focusing on architecture, transportation and wars, are being featured throughout the Modernization in Meiji Japan (1868-1912) exhibition, on view now and running until Aug. 28, 2016.

“The prints of the period show how Japan enthusiastically threw itself into modernization by adopting just about anything Western,” says Till. “It was truly amazing how every facet of life in Japan would experience an intense social and economic upheaval. Meiji is recognized as the great nation-building success story of the modern non-Western world—achieving in a few short decades what took the Western powers centuries to accomplish.”