CategoriesCultural and Religious Styles
Meiji Art
Japanese art of 1868–1912, when Western-style oil painting, modernised nihonga, new woodblock prints and export crafts competed.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
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About
The Meiji era, from the restoration of imperial rule in 1868 to the emperor's death in 1912, saw Japan remake itself as a modern industrial state, and artists argued over what that meant. The government hired Italian teachers for a technical art school in 1876, and Takahashi Yuichi used oils to paint a hanging salted salmon with startling realism. Kuroda Seiki returned from Paris in 1893 with a light, open-air manner and trained a generation in yōga, Western-style painting.
In response, Okakura Kakuzō and the American scholar Ernest Fenollosa championed nihonga, a modernised Japanese painting in ink and mineral colour; Yokoyama Taikan and Shimomura Kanzan came from their circle, while Takeuchi Seihō led the movement in Kyoto. Printmakers recorded gas lamps and railways: Kobayashi Kiyochika caught Tokyo at dusk, and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885–92) retold history and legend. Cloisonné, lacquer and metalwork made for world's fairs reached extraordinary refinement.
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