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Kiyohara Yukinobu (1643–1682) was a Japanese painter and one of the foremost women identified with the

Kanō school The is one of the most famous schools of Japanese painting. The Kanō school of painting was the dominant style of painting from the late 15th century until the Meiji period which began in 1868, by which time the school had divided into many di ...

. Her father

Kusumi Morikage ''The Great Japan Exhibition: Art of the Edo Period 1600–1868'', was a Japanese painter of the Edo period. He came from Kaga Province, the centre of the lands of the Maeda clan. He fell afoul of his teacher, Kanō Tan'yū, and became the Maed ...

was also a painter and her mother Kuniko was the niece of his longtime teacher and patron

Kanō Tan'yū was a Japanese painter of the Kanō school. One of the foremost Kanō painters, many of the best known Kanō works today are by Tan'yū. Biography His original given name was Morinobu; he was the eldest son of Kanō Takanobu and grandson ...

. Yukinobu lived in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

and likely studied under her father. Her work covered a wide variety of formats ranging from small scrolls to large screens. Thematically she was skilled in the

Yamato-e is a style of Japanese painting inspired by Tang dynasty paintings and fully developed by the late Heian period. It is considered the classical Japanese style. From the Muromachi period (15th century), the term Yamato-e has been used to distingui ...

style but was also notable for producing many works depicting women including legendary figures such as

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of '' The Tale of Genji,'' widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between abou ...

. Because many of Yukinobu's works are signed and sealed with her name, it suggests she had achieved enough recognition to receive commissions from middle class townspeople and

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

. A pair of her screens, ''Birds and Flowers of the Four Seasons'' (late 17th – early 18th century) was shown publicly for the first time in 2015 as part of an exhibition at the Kosetsu Memorial Museum in Tokyo.

Ihara Saikaku was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later ...

's ''

The Life of an Amorous Woman is a novel depicting the "floating world" of Edo period Japan, written by and published in 1686. Plot summary A man of the world who lives in the capital city Kyoto travels to , a suburban district of Kyoto, with some friends. They meet an ...

'' includes a story in which a courtesan commissions a work from Yukinobu.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yukinobu, Kiyohara Kanō school 1643 births 1682 deaths 17th-century Japanese painters 17th-century women artists Artists from Kyoto Japanese women painters