The Kyoto school (京都派 ''-ha'') was a collection of several styles and schools of

Japanese painting is one of the oldest and most highly refined of the Japanese visual arts, encompassing a wide variety of genres and styles. As with the history of Japanese arts in general, the long history of Japanese painting exhibits synthesis and competitio ...

of the late

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...

. Though there are many broad similarities between the styles within the school, these styles display key differences that separate them. Many were in fact reactions to one another, an artist or group of artists seeking to express themselves differently from those around them. Those subscribers of the Kyoto school found themselves at odds with the state sanctioned

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 ...

, thus contributing to the vague nature of the former. Kakuzo Okakura, predominant Japanese art historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, traced the origins of the Kyoto school to the schools of both Manchu-shin and

Ming The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...

dynasties in China. The two latter schools focused on the power of the artist as a lay person or scholar, as opposed to a professional. Okakura noted Kyoto school's attempts to repurpose the Japanese tradition of copying works from other (predominantly Chinese) cultures, a technique known as ''

utsushi The Japanese term, can be translated as, appropriation, emulation, inspiration, attribution, etc. However, the word Utsushi encompasses the meanings found in all the terms mentioned. An Utsushi can be a work where an artist is inspired by a tr ...

''. Unlike the bold and colorful style of the Kanō school or the restrained elegance of Tan'yu school, the Kyoto style favored surreal and elongated forms. One of the more prominent schools under the Kyoto school umbrella was the

Shijō school The , also known as the ''Maruyama–Shijō'' school, was a Japanese school of painting. History It was an offshoot school of the Maruyama school of Japanese painting founded by Maruyama Ōkyo, and his former student Matsumura Goshun in the ...

, named after the street where many of the artists had their studios. ''Shijō'' (四条) literally translates to 'fourth avenue.' This school, which was established by Matsumura Goshun, sought to produce a synthesis of the more realistic style of

Maruyama Ōkyo , born Maruyama Masataka, was a Japanese artist active in the late 18th century. He moved to Kyoto, during which he studied artworks from Chinese, Japanese and Western sources. A personal style of Western naturalism mixed with Eastern deco ...

with that of the '' nanga'' or Southern School styles. The Shijō style had an urban character and predated the Japanese and Chinese artists a century later in anticipating the need to use styles that appeal to an emergent bourgeois class.

Mori Sosen was a Japanese painter of the Shijō school during the Edo period. Mori Sosen is famous for his many paintings depicting monkeys. He also painted other animals, such as deer, boars, and peafowl. Robert van Gulik called him "an undisputed maste ...

was one of the more prominent painters in the Shijō school. The ''nanga'' or Southern School, meanwhile, rebelled against the realism of Ōkyo and the Shijō artists, seeking to return to the inspiration and style of

China's China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Southern School. The Kyoto tradition is evidenced in the ceramic art of potters of the Kiyomizu and Awata kilns, which specialized in enameled porcelains and pottery, respectively.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kyoto School (Art) Schools of Japanese art

See also

References