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The , also known as the ''Maruyama–Shijō'' school, was a Japanese school of painting.

History

It was an offshoot school of the

Maruyama school Maruyama may refer to: * Maruyama (surname), a Japanese surname and list of people with the name * Maruyama, Chiba, a town in Japan * Maruyama Park in Kyoto * Mount Maru (disambiguation) Mount Maru may refer to: * Mount Maru (Esan), a volcano on ...

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 ...

founded by Maruyama Ōkyo, and his former student

Matsumura Goshun Matsumura GoshunAccording to standard references, his name is ''either'' Goshun, modelled after Chinese habit, ''or'' Matsumura Gekkei. ( jap. ; April 28, 1752 (traditional: Hōreki 2/3/15) – September 4, 1811 (traditional: Bunka 8/7/17)

in the late 18th century. This school was one of several that made up the larger

Kyoto school The is the name given to the Japanese philosophical movement centered at Kyoto University that assimilated Western philosophy and religious ideas and used them to reformulate religious and moral insights unique to the East Asian cultural tradit ...

. The school is named after the

Shijō Street runs in the center of Kyoto, Japan from east to west through the commercial center of the city. Shijō literally means ''Fourth Avenue'' of Heian-kyō, the ancient capital. History The section between Shinkyōgoku street and the vicini ...

("Fourth Avenue") 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 c ...

where many major artists were based. Its primary patrons were rich merchants in and around Kyoto/Osaka and also appealed to the '' kamigata'' who were of the established aristocrat and artisan families of the Imperial capital during the late 18th/19th centuries.

Style

Stylistically, the Shijō style can best be described as a synthesis of two rival styles of the time. Maruyama Ōkyo was an experienced and expert painter of '' sumi-e'' ink paintings, and accomplished a great degree of realism in his creations, emphasizing direct observation of depicted subjects which was a direct contravention of the officially sponsored schools of the time, Kanō and Tosa, which emphasized decorativeness with highly formalized and stylized figures taught to its students via copying paintings of past masters. The Kanō and Tosa schools had become bywords for rigid formalism by this time. Meanwhile, a number of artists, rebelling against Ōkyo's realism, formed the '' nanga'' ("southern pictures") school, basing their style largely on the

Southern school The Southern School () of Chinese painting, often called " literati painting" (), is a term used to denote art and artists which stand in opposition to the formal Northern School () of painting. The distinction is not geographic, but relates to ...

Chinese painting Chinese painting () is one of the oldest continuous artistic traditions in the world. Painting in the traditional style is known today in Chinese as ''guó huà'' (), meaning "national painting" or "native painting", as opposed to Western style ...

. The artists of the Shijō school sought to reconcile the differences between these two styles, creating works that synthesized the best elements of both. The school's style focuses on a Western-influenced objective realism, but achieved with traditional Japanese painting techniques. It concentrates less on the exact depiction of its subject, but rather on expressing the inner spirit and usually has an element of playfulness and humor compared to the Maruyama school. Popular motifs include tranquil landscapes, kachō (bird and flower), animals, and traditional subjects from Chinese poetic and Confucian lore, but there is generally little or no interest in legends, history, or classical literature.''Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Shijō School''. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1981.

Artists

One of the most well-known Shijō artists in the West is Mori Sosen, who is known for his great number of paintings of monkeys.

Shibata Zeshin was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era. He has been called "Japan's greatest lacquerer", but his reputation as painter and print artist is more complex: In Japan, he is known as both too ...

is also closely associated with the Shijō school, though he worked in many other styles and mediums, most notably lacquer objects and lacquer painting. *

* Matsumura Keibun * Maruyama Ōkyo * Mori Sosen * Kikuchi Yōsai * Ohara Shoson (Koson) *

Watanabe Kazan was a Japanese painter, scholar and statesman member of the samurai class. Biography He was born Watanabe Sadayasu in Edo (now Tokyo) to a poor samurai family, and his artistic talent was developed from an early age. His family served the ...

References

*Chibbett, David. The History of Japanese Printing and Book Illustration. New York: Kodansha International Ltd, 1977. *Japanese Paintings and Prints of the Shijo School. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1981. *Munsterberg, Hugo (1957). "The Arts of Japan: An Illustrated History." Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company. *—. Splendors of Imperial Japan: Arts of the Meiji Period from the Khalili Collection. London: The Khalili Family Trust, 2002. *Zeshin and Related Artists. London: Milne Henderson, 1976.

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shijo school Schools of Japanese art