was a Japanese

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

who painted in the

Yōga is a style of artistic painting in Japan, typically of Japanese subjects, themes, or landscapes, but using Western (European) artistic conventions, techniques, and materials. The term was coined in the Meiji period (1868–1912) to distingui ...

style. He was a founding member of the

Shunyo-kai art society Shunyo-kai art society (), is a Japanese art society founded in 1922 by the Western-style (''yōga'') artists from the painting department of Nihon Bijutsuin (English: ''Japan Visual Arts Academy''). As of 2021, they have some 200 members. They an ...

Biography

He attended the Kansai Academy of Art (also known as Kansai Art School) in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

, Japan. He studied under

Asai Chū was a Japanese painter, noted for his pioneering work in developing the ''yōga'' (Western-style) art movement in late 19th century and early twentieth-century Japanese painting. Biography Asai was born to an ex-samurai class household in Sak ...

along with Sōtarō Yasui. One of the artists he admired early in his career was

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; ; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French people, French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionism, Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially femininity, fe ...

, while another formative influence later on was

Georges Rouault Georges-Henri Rouault (; 27 May 1871, Paris - 13 February 1958, Paris) was a French painter, draughtsman, and printmaker, whose work is often associated with Fauvism and Expressionism. Childhood and education Rouault was born into a poor famil ...

. Professor of Art History Torao Miyagawa wrote that:

"Umehara is one of the few Japanese artists of this period who found his style early in his career and then proceeded to perfect it over the years. He is also one of the first Japanese Western-style artists to discard any conscious effort to impose the formal rules or even the emotional overtones of traditional Japanese painting on the Western techniques. He favoured and exploited oils as a means of individual expression, utilizing the texture and strength of these pigments with a boldness and simple directness unrivalled by any of his contemporaries, and not observable to any degree in Japan until after World War II."

References

1888 births 1986 deaths 20th-century Japanese painters Artists from Kyoto People from Shimogyō, Kyoto Yōga painters Imperial household artists {{Japan-painter-stub