was a Japanese artist, in the words of art historian Timothy Clarke, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting".

Biography

Living through the

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 character ...

to the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

, Kyōsai witnessed Japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. Born at

Koga KOGA is a Dutch bicycle manufacturer based in Heerenveen, Friesland. The company is known for its long time partnership with Japanese frame manufacturer Miyata, producing bicycles and sponsoring racing teams under the brand name Koga Miyata. As ...

, he was the son of a

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 ...

. His first aesthetic shock was at the age of nine when he picked up a human head separated from a corpse in the Kanda river. After working for a short time as a boy with

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk ta ...

artist

Utagawa Kuniyoshi Utagawa Kuniyoshi ( ja, 歌川国芳, ; January 1, 1798 – April 14, 1861) was one of the last great masters of the Japanese ukiyo-e style of woodblock prints and painting.Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric ''et al'' (2005). "Kuniyoshi" in He was ...

, he received his formal artistic training in 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 ...

under Maemura Tōwa (前村洞和, ? – 1841), who gave him the nickname "The Painting Demon", but Kyōsai soon abandoned the formal traditions for the greater freedom of the popular school. During the political ferment which produced and followed the revolution of 1867, Kyōsai attained a reputation as a

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfred Grévin (1827–1892) * Al ...

. His very long painting on ''makimono'' (a horizontal type of Japanese

handscroll The handscroll is a long, narrow, horizontal scroll format in East Asia used for calligraphy or paintings. A handscroll usually measures up to several meters in length and around 25–40 cm in height. Handscrolls are generally viewed starting ...

/scroll) "The battle of the farts" may be seen as a caricature of this ferment. He was arrested three times and imprisoned by the authorities of the

shogunate , officially , was the title of the military dictators of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, though during part of the Kamakura ...

. Soon after the assumption of effective power by the Emperor, a great congress of painters and

men of letters ''Men of Letters: The Post Office Heroes who Fought the Great War'' is a book by Duncan Barrett, co-author of '' The Sugar Girls'' and ''GI Brides'' and editor of '' The Reluctant Tommy''. It was published by AA Publishing on 1 August 2014 and off ...

was held at which Kyōsai was present. He again expressed his opinion of the new movement in a caricature, which had a great popular success, but also brought him into the hands of the police, this time of the opposite party. Kyōsai is considered by many to be the greatest successor of

Hokusai , known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. He is best known for the woodblock print series '' Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'', which includes the iconic print ''The Great W ...

(of whom, however, he was not a pupil), as well as the first political caricaturist of Japan. His work mirrored his life in its wild and undisciplined nature, and occasionally reflected his love of drink. Although he did not possess Hokusai's dignity, power or reticence, he compensated with a fantastic exuberance, which always lent interest to his technically excellent draughtsmanship. He created what is considered to be the first

manga magazine Manga ( Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is used ...

in 1874: ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'', with Kanagaki Robun. The magazine was heavily influenced by ''

Japan Punch The ''Japan Punch'' was a satirical comic magazine and journal that was authored, illustrated and published by English painter and cartoonist Charles Wirgman from 1862 to 1887. The publication reflected the social context of Bakumatsu Yokohama a ...

'', founded in 1862 by

Charles Wirgman Charles Wirgman (31 August 1832 - 8 February 1891) was an English artist and cartoonist, the creator of the ''Japan Punch'' and illustrator in China and Meiji period-Japan for the ''Illustrated London News''. Wirgman was the eldest son of Ferdi ...

, a British cartoonist. ''Eshinbun Nipponchi'' had a very simple style of drawings and did not become popular with many people, and ended after just three issues. Flowers and Birds, Kawanabe Kyōsai

In addition to his caricatures, Kyōsai painted a large number of pictures and sketches, often choosing subjects from the

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, rangin ...

of his country, Nô drama, nature and religion, for example ''The Temptation of Shaka Niorai'' or ''The goddess Kwannon on a dragon'' (on ''

kakejiku __NOTOC__ A , more commonly referred to as a , is a Japanese hanging scroll used to display and exhibit paintings and calligraphy inscriptions and designs mounted usually with silk fabric edges on a flexible backing, so that it can be rolled f ...

'' frame) A fine collection of these works is preserved in the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

; and there are also good examples in the National Art Library at South Kensington and the

Guimet Museum The Guimet Museum (full name in french: Musée national des arts asiatiques-Guimet; MNAAG; ) is an art museum located at 6, place d'Iéna in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, France. Literally translated into English, its full name is the Nation ...

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...

. The Kawanabe Kyōsai Memorial Museum was established in 1977, located at Warabi,

Saitama Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Saitama Prefecture has a population of 7,338,536 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 3,797 km2 (1,466 sq mi). Saitama Prefecture borders Tochigi Prefecture ...

, Japan.

Erwin Bälz Erwin Otto Eduard von Bälz (13 January 1849 – 31 August 1913) was a German internist, anthropologist, personal physician to the Japanese Imperial Family and cofounder of modern western medicine in Japan. Biography The son of a contr ...

wrote in his diary that Kyosai died because of gastric cancer.Erwin Bälz - Das Leben eines deutschen Arztes im erwachenden Japan, Hrsg. Toku Bälz, 1930 A

crater Crater may refer to: Landforms * Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet * Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surf ...

on Mercury has been named in his honor.

Bibliography

The most important work about Kyōsai's art and life was written by himself: ''Kyōsai Gadan'' (暁斎画談), or "Kyōsai's Treatise on Painting", half autobiography and half painting manual. An important contemporary work concerning the artist is ''Kawanabe Kyōsai-ō den'' (河鍋暁斎翁伝), or "Biography of the Old Man Kawanabe Kyōsai", by Iijima Kyoshin (飯島虚心). The work was finished in 1899, but published only in 1984. Many westerners came to visit Kyōsai, and their memoirs about the artist are valuable. The two important ones, both rare, are: *

Émile Étienne Guimet Émile Étienne Guimet (2 June 183612 August 1918) was a French industrialist, traveler and connoisseur. He was born at Lyon and succeeded his father Jean-Baptiste Guimet in the direction of his "Ultramarine, artificial ultramarine" factory. H ...

, ''Promenades japonaises'', Paris, 1880 * Josiah Conder, ''Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyōsai'', Tokyo, 1911. Conder was a serious student of Japanese art; after some initial rejections, he was accepted as Kyōsai's pupil, and accompanied him for ten years until the master's death. The most updated, and easily available, reference to Kyōsai's life and works in English is: *Timothy Clark, ''Demon of painting: the art of Kawanabe Kyōsai'', London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by the British Museum Press, 1993

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kawanabe, Kyosai 1831 births 1889 deaths Ukiyo-e artists 19th-century Japanese people 19th-century Japanese painters Buddhist artists