Yang Guifei

Shōen Uemura was one of the leading women artists of modern Japan. The majority of Uemura’s works depict women, and by using ukiyo-e iconography, she painted what she considered to be the “ideal female image.” The artist began attracting attention as a painter in her late teens, and she became a role model for many women artists of her time.

Around 1907, Uemura brought back the popularity of bijinga (paintings of beautiful women) in Japanese art. She was famous for her amazing skill and for showing women as strong and independent in her paintings. People had mixed feelings about bijinga; some loved them, but others thought they were shallow or disrespectful. Uemura started to focus more on showing what these women felt and thought, which was different from her earlier work. She kept trying new ways to paint, and her painting of Yang Guifei is a good example of how she paid attention to small details to make her subjects come to life.

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