Kobayashi Kiyochika

Kobayashi Kiyochika

Kobayashi Kiyochika ( Japanese 小林 清 親 ; September 10, 1847 - November 28, 1915 ) was a Japanese woodblock print artist of the Meiji period .

life and work

Kobayashi was born the son of a low-ranking government official in Edo (now Tokyo ). The family moved to Washizu (now Kosai ) in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1869 , but he then returned to Tokyo to study painting. He studied Western oil painting under Charles Wirgman and Japanese style painting under Kawanabe Kyōsai and Shibata Zeshin . Inspired by imported lithographs, he turned to woodcuts. He was quite successful at this, especially between 1876 and 1881, when interest in his paintings began to decline. Kobayashi also illustrated books, magazines, and newspapers. He reported on the Sino-Japanese War from 1894 to 1895 and created pictures for it.

In his prints Kobayashi showed Tokyo changing under western influence. But he also created landscapes and prints of flowers and birds, Kachō-ga ( 花鳥画 ). He combined image design and coloring from the ukiyoe style with a western perspective, with light sources and shades. Despite this mixed style, he is considered the last master of ukiyo-e.

gallery

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  Cat and Chinese lantern, 1877

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  Snow in the Suruga-chō

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  Evening Fuji,
  from Edo Bridge, 1979

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  Shinobazu Pond, ca.1880

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  Landing of Japanese troops in the Sino-Japanese War, 1895

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  Captain Hirose Takeo

Remarks

1. ↑ Left in the picture "Echigoya", the clothing store of the Mitsui family at that time . The modern building in the background is the Mitsui Bank.
2. ↑ Hirose went down with his ship in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 when he was looking for the wounded.

literature

• Stephens, Amy Reigle (Ed.): The new wave. Twentieth-century Jaqpanese prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection. Bamboo-Publishing & Hotei-Japanese Prints, 1993. ISBN 1-870076-19-2 .
• Tokyo-to bijutsukan, Kyoto-shi bijutsukan, Asahi Shimbun (ed.): Kindai Nihon bijutsu no ayumi ten. Exhibition 1979.
• Laurance P. Roberts: A Dictionary of Japanese Artists. Weatherhill, 1976. ISBN 0-8348-0113-2 .

Web links

Commons : Kobayashi Kiyochika  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Kobayashi is the family name, Kiyochika the first name.