Posts in Category: Japanese
Hiroshi Yoshida
Hiroshi Yoshida, September 19, 1876 – April 5, 1950, was a Japanese painter and printmaker. Born Hiroshi Ueda in Kurume, he was adopted in 1891 by his art teacher, Yoshida Kasaburō. He studied painting in Kyoto with Tamura Sōritsu and then Western-style painting at Koyama Shōtarō’s Fudōsha school in Tokyo.
Yoshida joined the Meiji Fine Arts Society and helped establish the Taiheiyō Gakai (Pacific Art Society) in 1902. He traveled in the United States and Europe from 1899, published his first woodblock print in 1920, and later founded the Japan Mountain Painting Association. His sons Tōshi Yoshida and Hodaka Yoshida also became artists.
Yoshida’s work is held by the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum.
Kobayashi Kiyochika
Kobayashi Kiyochika, September 10, 1847 – November 28, 1915, was a Japanese painter, print designer, and illustrator active from the late Edo period through the Meiji era. Born in Honjo, Edo, as Kobayashi Katsunosuke, he came from a family connected to the Tokugawa shogunate administration and left with the Tokugawa retinue after the restoration of imperial rule in 1868. He returned to Tokyo in 1874 and began producing woodblock prints there in 1876.
Kiyochika was largely self-taught. He associated with Shibata Zeshin and Kawanabe Kyōsai, though the extent of formal study with either artist is uncertain; he also engaged with Western pictorial methods circulating in Yokohama and Tokyo. From 1876 to 1881, he made ninety-three views of Tokyo, and he later worked in book, magazine, and newspaper illustration, painting, and prints relating to the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars.
In 1894, Kiyochika opened an art school. His students included Inoue Yasuji, Taguchi Beisaku, and Tsuchiya Kōitsu. Principal collections of his work include the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Honolulu Museum of Art; the Ota Memorial Museum of Art; and the British Museum.
Kuroda Seiki
Kuroda Seiki, August 9, 1866 – July 15, 1924, was a Japanese painter and one of the founders of modern Western-style (yōga) painting in Japan. Born in Kagoshima, he studied law before turning to art, training for nearly a decade in Paris under the academic painter Raphaël Collin.
After returning to Japan in 1893, Kuroda introduced plein-air painting, Impressionist influences, and modern European techniques to Japanese audiences. He taught at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, helped establish the White Horse Society (Hakubakai), and played a central role in the development of Japanese oil painting during the Meiji period.
Kuroda’s paintings include portraits, landscapes, figure studies, interiors, and floral subjects. He later served as director of the Imperial Art Academy and was named to the House of Peers. Today his works are held by the Tokyo National Museum, the Kuroda Memorial Hall, and major museums throughout Japan.
