Takahashi Yuichi

Takahashi Yuichi, portrait in the Mie Prefectural Museum

"Oiran", 1872 (oil on canvas, 76.3 × 54.0 cm)

Sake ( 鮭 , "salmon"), around 1877 (oil on paper, 140.0 × 46.5 cm)

Takahashi Yuichi ( Japanese 高橋 由 一 ; * February 5, 1828 in Edo ; † July 6, 1894 ibid) was a Japanese painter of the Western style of painting ( yōga ).

Life

Takahashi was born as the son of the feudal man of the Sano-Han ( Shimotsuke Province , today Tochigi Prefecture ) Takahashi Genjūrō ​​in Edo. Interested in painting at an early age, he began under the painters of the Kanō School Kanō Dōtei, then to study with Kanō Tangyokusai, but had to give up due to lack of time. In 1862 he got a job in the " Bansho-shirabe sho ", the establishment of the shogunate for the study of Western scriptures, and studied there under Kawakami Tōgai (1827-1881) Western painting. He studied oil painting under Charles Wirgman . In the Meiji period he got a job in the " Daigaku nankō ", a forerunner of the University of Tokyo . In 1873 he opened his own painting school "Tenkairō". Among his students was Harada Naojirō (1863–1899), who continued his studies in Munich.

Act

Hiraga Gennai had already done oil painting a hundred years earlier . Next is z. B. Shiba Kōkan , who studied oil painting and created copperplate engravings in the western style. Takahashi must have known and appreciated Shiba's work: he created a posthumous portrait of him. But it was Takahashi who was there with his painting at the beginning of the Meiji period, when the country opened up to the West and also to Western art.

Deeply impressed by the high degree of realism of Dutch painters of his time, he created still lifes using oil paint with this painting technique, which was new for Japan at the time. He was the first master of Japanese oil painting of the Mejii period , but remained rather incomprehensible to some of his contemporaries.

Entrance to the "Takahashi Yuichi Museum" ( 高橋 由 一 館 , Takahashi Yuichi-kan ) in Kotohira

His motifs were everyday things like flowers or food like tofu , fish and mussels, but also landscapes. He was also known for portraits of people of his time. He became famous for the picture Bijin ( 美人 ) of an Oiran and the portrait of the philosopher Nishi Amane . The portrait Bijin , as well as one of the three still lifes sake ( 鮭 ) of a salmon from around 1877 were classified as an important cultural asset of Japan .

Takahashi can be seen as a representative of the radical opening of Japan. He cut off his samurai braid, the chonmage , and saw his mission in learning the western art of painting, even though he was almost 40 years old at the time. He opened his own painting school, organized exhibitions and was the editor of an art magazine. There was direct contact with the English painter and caricaturist Charles Wirgman, who lives in Yokohama and who also documented contemporary Japan in great detail.

Exhibitions (selection)

• Yuichi Takahashi Museum of Art in Kotohira , Japan
• 2012: University of the Arts Tōkyō and National Museum of Modern Art Kyōto (MOMAK)
• 2013: The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama

Collections

• Takahashi collection in the Pola Museum of Art , Hakone
• The collection in the Kotohira-gū Temple has 27 paintings by Takahashi, which can be seen as a permanent exhibition in the Takahashi-Yuichi building. Among other things "Futamigaura", and the still lifes "Tofu" and "Tai".
• The permanent exhibition at APMOA - Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya - also includes works by Takahashi, e.g. For example, the still life “ Kitchen Appliances ” from 1878/79 and the landscape painting Shinobazu no ike ( 不忍 池 , “Shinobazu pond”) from 1880.

Remarks

1. ↑ This picture was shown at the exhibition Japanese Painting in Western Style 1985 in the Museum for East Asian Art in Cologne.

literature

• Irmtraud Schaarschmidt-Richter (Ed.): The other modern. Japanese painting from 1910 to 1970. Stemmle, Zurich / New York 1999, ISBN 3-908161-85-1 . (Exhibition catalog).
• Japan Foundation (Ed.): Japanese Painting in the Western Style, 19th and 20th Centuries. Exhibition catalog, Cologne, 1985.

English

• The Aesthetics of 'Bijin' - USC scholar discusses a Japanese notion of beauty and its artistic representation in Meiji period paintings. "English lecture on the picture" Oiran "
• Gian Carlo Calza, John T. Carpenter (Eds.): Hokusai and His Age. Ukiyo-e painting, printmaking and book illustration in late Edo Japan. Hotei Publishing, Amsterdam 2005, ISBN 90-74822-57-6 .
• Gennifer Weisenfeld: Mavo. Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931. University of California Press, Berkeley 2002, ISBN 0-520-22338-1 .

Japanese

• Sakamoto Kazumichi: Takahashi Yuichi. Shincho Nihon bijutsu bunko 23. Shinchosha Publishing House 1998. ISBN 4-10-601543-9

Web links

Commons : Takahashi Yuichi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Takahashi Yuichi Art , Japanese
• Takahashi collection in the Pola Museum

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Blog of the artist Bert Feringa, Sept. 2009  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ 美人 (花魁) . In: 東京 藝術 大学 大学 美術館 収 蔵 品 デ ー タ ベ ー ス . Tōkyō University of the Arts Museum of Art, accessed April 14, 2013 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ 荒 俣 宏 の 「超 博物 誌」 . Nichiro Salmon Museum, archived from the original on February 22, 2008 ; Retrieved April 14, 2013 (Japanese, about Takahashi Yuichi's still life Sake from around 1877 (oil on paper), around 1878 (oil on canvas) and 1879/80 (oil on wood)). 
4. ↑ 鮭 . In: 東京 藝術 大学 大学 美術館 収 蔵 品 デ ー タ ベ ー ス . Tōkyō University of the Arts Museum of Art, accessed April 14, 2013 (Japanese). 
5. ↑ Explanations of the exhibition, MOMAK 2012, [1]
6. ↑ Art Museum of the University, Tōkyō Geijutsu Daigaku, April 28th - June 24th, 2012 , large overview of his work, which attracted over 80,000 visitors.
7. ↑ From TAKAHASHI Yuichi to MATSUMOTO Shunsuke , January 26th - March 24th, 2013  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
8. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated May 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
9. ^ Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Permanent Collection , Nagoya
10. ↑ Illustration of kitchen utensils inventory no . JO197700007000 .
11. ↑ Figure Shinobazu Pond , inventory no. JO199500005000

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