Uemura Shōen
We continue our special month with the collection of the Fukuda Art Museum in Kyoto. Have a great Sunday! :)
Uemura Shōen was born in Kyoto. Her real name was Tsune. Shōen attended the private painting school run by Suzuki Shōnen while studying in the Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting. Afterwards, Shōen studied under Shijō School masters, namely Kōno Bairei and Takeuchi Seihō. Her pseudonym is a combination of "Sho” from Shōnen and “En” from Cha-en (tea plantation) because her family business was a leaf tea shop. Her lifelong pursuit of expressing female beauty established an elegant and highly refined painting style. Shōen paved the way for modern female painters, and her name made history as the first female recipient of the Order of Culture.
The puppet play, performed on the screen as an alternative stage, shows a famous scene from the Jōruri (Japanese ballad drama) Meido no Hikyaku by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, in which the hero and heroine are eloping under one umbrella in snow. The young woman who controls the puppet for the prostitute Umekawa seems animated as if she herself is acting, not noticing her sleeve is overhanging on the screen after leaning forward. The slightly chiding look from her colleague puppeteer to calm her is effectively enhancing the realistic feel. Shōen was more attracted to the beauty of lines in ukiyo-e in woodblock prints through the hands of carvers and printers, than the original work by ukiyo-e painters. This work is a copy of a ukiyo-e by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806), originally a large woodblock print on silk canvas. This is a very rare example that shows Shōen's specific interest in some ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
Please note that the masterpiece we present today is a very long scroll - we had to crop it so we could present it to you in our app, sorry for this!
P.S. Love the grace of ukiyo-e and Japanese ballad drama? You’ll find that spirit in our Japanese Art 50 Postcards Set—on stage in your own mailbox.
P.P.S. Read about Noguchi Shōhin, another fascinating female artists from Japan at the turn of the 20th century.