was a

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

painter, noted for his pioneering work in developing 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 distingu ...

'' (Western-style) art movement in late 19th-century

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 ...

.There were many Japanese painters who tried Western painting and Western style painting in the modern age, but Yuichi is said to be the first "Western painter" in Japan who learned full-scale oil painting techniques and was active from 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 characte ...

to the middle of the Meiji era.

Biography

Takahashi was born to 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 h ...

-class household at the Edo residence of

Sano Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Shimotsuke Province (modern-day Tochigi Prefecture), Japan. It was centered in what is now part of the city of Sano, Tochigi. Sano was ruled through most of its hist ...

, a subsidiary

han Han may refer to: Ethnic groups * Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group. ** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...

Sakura Domain was a feudal domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of Edo period Japan, located in Shimōsa Province (modern-day Chiba Prefecture), Japan. It was centered on Sakura Castle in what is now the city of Sakura, Chiba. It was ruled for most of its hi ...

, where his father was a retainer of the

Hotta clan The was a Japanese clan that ruled the Sakura Domain in Shimosa Province in the late Edo period. Jindai-ji in the present-day city of Sakura was the clan's bodaiji A in Japanese Buddhism is a temple which, generation after generation, ta ...

. Interested in art from childhood, he apprenticed to 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 ...

, but later became fascinated with western-style art through

lithographs Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

which were being available in Japan during the

Bakumatsu period was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji govern ...

. In 1862, he obtained a place in the arts department of the ''

Bansho Shirabesho The ', or "Institute for the Study of Barbarian Books," was the Japanese institute charged with the translation and study of foreign books and publications in the late Edo Period. Origin The institute was founded in 1856 that catered to the sa ...

'', the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate (, Japanese 徳川幕府 ''Tokugawa bakufu''), also known as the , was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005)"''Tokugawa-jidai''"in ''Japan Encyclopedia ...

’s research institute in western learning, where he studied under Kawakami Togai, and where he began experimentation with

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

. In 1866, he went to

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

to study under the English artist and cartoonist

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 ...

, who was so impressed with his talent that he sponsored his participation in the Paris World Exhibition of 1867. After the

Meiji Restoration The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...

, despite his largely self-taught credentials, he was appointed a professor of art at the ''Kobubijutsu Gakkō'' (the Technical Fine Arts School) by the new

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji o ...

, and was a student and an assistant for the Italian foreign advisor Antonio Fontanesi, who had been hired by the

in the late 1870s to introduce western oil painting to Japan. In 1879, he entered a contest sponsored by the

Kotohira-gū (also known as , , or Konpira Shrine in English) is a Shinto shrine in the town of Kotohira in Kagawa, Japan. This shrine is patron of sea ship transport and sailors. Located at halfway to the top of Mount Zōzu, the shrine stands at the en ...

shrine in

Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...

for ceiling panel paintings, donating all of the paintings to the shrine after the contest. The shrine still displays a collection of 27 of his paintings. Also in 1879, Takahashi was recommended by the ''

Genrōin The was a national assembly in early Meiji Japan, established after the Osaka Conference of 1875. It is also referred to as the Senate of Japan, being the word used to describe the Roman Senate, and other western legislatures named after it. ...

'' to become a

court painter A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or princely family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Painters were the most common, but the cour ...

, and was commissioned to paint a portrait of the

emperor An emperor (from la, imperator, via fro, empereor) is a monarch, and usually the sovereignty, sovereign ruler of an empire or another type of imperial realm. Empress, the female equivalent, may indicate an emperor's wife (empress consort), ...

. In 1881, he received a large commission from Viscount

Mishima Michitsune was a Japanese samurai of the Satsuma Domain during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. After the Meiji Restoration he served in the Home Ministry as a bureaucrat and viscount. He is also commonly known as Yahei or Yahée (弥兵衞 ''Yahee''). His ...

to paint scenes of

public works Public works are a broad category of infrastructure projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community. They include public buildings ( municipal buildings, sc ...

projects in

Yamagata prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Yamagata Prefecture has a population of 1,079,950 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 9,325 km² (3,600 sq mi). Yamagata Prefecture borders Akita Prefecture to the nor ...

. Takahashi produced mostly

portraiture A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

and

landscape painting Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent compo ...

s, but also still life works. His best-known painting is a

salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus ''Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Oncorhy ...

hung up to dry, which has been recognized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government as an

Important Cultural Property of Japan An The term is often shortened into just is an item officially classified as Tangible Cultural Property by the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs ( Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and judged to b ...

. He died at home in 1897.

Noted works

*, 1872, Tokyo University of the Arts, National Important Cultural Propert

*, 1877, Tokyo University of the Arts, National Important Cultural Propert

References

* Keene, Donald. ''Dawn to the West''. Columbia University Press; (1998). * Mason, Penelope. ''History of Japanese Art ''. Prentice Hall (2005). * Miyoshi, Masao. ''Postmodernism and Japan''. Duke University Press (1986) * Sadao, Tsuneko. ''Discovering the Arts of Japan: A Historical Overview''. Kodansha International (2003). * Schaarschmidt Richte. ''Japanese Modern Art Painting From 1910 ''. Edition Stemmle. * Weisenfeld, Gennifer. ''MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905–1931''. University of California Press (2001). *　MoMAK　京都国立近代美術館 https://www.momak.go.jp/Japanese/exhibitionArchive/2012/393.html * ネット美術館「アートまとめん」 http://artmatome.com/高橋由一%E3%80%80【略歴と作品一覧】/ *中右恵理子; 長峯朱里. "Ⅱ 高橋由一作《鮭図》の絵画材料および技法について". 2018.平成30年度文化財保存修復研究センター紀要,15-28 *高階, 絵里加. 高橋由一<山形市街図>と江戸名所絵. 人文學報 2011, 101:19-35 *隈元謙次郎(Kenjiro Kumamoto)"高橋由一の風景画(Landscape Paintings by Takahashi Yuichi)"美術研究(The bijutsu kenkyu : the journal of art studies),160:31 - 44 ��京藝術大学大学美術館収蔵品データベース"美人(花魁)" http://jmapps.ne.jp/geidai/det.html?data_id=4124 ��京藝術大学大学美術館収蔵品データベース"鮭" http://jmapps.ne.jp/geidai/det.html?data_id=4126

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Takahashi, Yuichi 1828 births 1894 deaths Court painters Japanese portrait painters People of Meiji-period Japan Yōga painters 19th-century Japanese painters Artists from Tokyo Artists from Tokyo Metropolis