Koyama Shōtaro

Koyama Shōtaro

Portrait of Kawakami Tōgai

Koyama Shōtarō ( Japanese 小山 正 太郎 ; born February 15, 1857 in Nagaoka ; died January 7, 1916 ) was an early painter in the Western, Yōga style, in Japan.

life and work

Koyama enrolled in Tokyo in 1872 in the private art school Chōkōdoku-kan ( 聴 香 読 画 館 ) run by Kawakami Tōgai , then switched to the art school of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce ( 工部 美術 学校 , Kōbu bijutsu gakkō ), where he came under the influence of the head of the painting class Antonio Fontanesi . When Fontanesi returned to Italy in 1878, Koyama also left school. That year he and his friends founded the "Association of the Eleventh" ( 十 一次 会 , Jūichiji-kai ), so named because it was founded in the 11th year of the Meiji period . - In 1889 he founded the "Meiji Art Association" ( 明治 美術 会 , Meiji bijutsu-kai ) with Asai Chū , Matsuoka Hisashi and others .

In the meantime, Koyama had opened his own school on Dango-Hangweg ( 団 子 坂 , -saka ) in Hongō District, which he called Fudō-sha ( 不同 社 ). There he devoted himself with all his might to the education of promising students such as Nakamura Fusetsu , Yoshida Hiroshi , Kosugi Hōan , Ishikawa Toraji , Mitsutani Kunishirō , Aoki Shigeru , Sakamoto Hanjirō , Kanokogi Takeshirō and Nakagawa Hachirō . He also taught at the Tokyo High School and thus worked widely as an educator. During the Sino-Japanese War from 1894 to 1895 he worked as a war painter.

Koyama left a rather small work, painted in an academic manner and mostly in dark brown tones. Worth mentioning are the "portrait of Kawakami Tōgai" ( 川 上 冬 崖 像 , -zō ), " herding boy " ( 牧童 , Bokudō ; 1879/1880) and "cherry trees in Sendai" ( 仙台 の 桜 , Sendai no sakura ; 1881).

photos

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  Shepherd boy

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  Homestead (watercolor)

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  Peonies

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  Village street

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  Cherry trees in Sendai

literature

• Tazawa, Yutaka: Koyama Shōtarō . In: Biographical Dictionary of Japanese Art. Kodansha International, 1981. ISBN 0-87011-488-3 .
• Laurance P. Roberts: Koyama Shōtarō . In: A Dictionary of Japanese Artists. Weatherhill, 1976. ISBN 0-8348-0113-2 .

Web links

Commons : Koyama Shōtarō  - 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, Koyama is the family name, Shōtarō the first name.