- Asai Chū
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Asai Chū
Asai ChūBorn July 22, 1856
Sakura Chiba, JapanDied December 16, 1907 (aged 51) Nationality Japanese Field Painter, Movement Yoga Asai Chū (浅井 忠 , July 22, 1856 – December 16, 1907) 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.
Contents
Biography
Asai was born to an ex-samurai class household in Sakura, in the Kantō region of Japan, where his father had been a retainer of the Sakura Domain. He attended the domain school, where his father was principal, and left home in 1873 to pursue English language studies in Tokyo. However, he became interested in the arts, and enrolled as a pupil of Kunisawa Shinkuro in western oil painting classes. In 1876, he enrolled as one of the first students in the Kobubijutsu Gakkō (the Technical Fine Arts School), where he was able to study under the Italian foreign advisor Antonio Fontanesi, who had been hired by the Meiji government in the late 1870s to introduce western oil painting to Japan.
In 1889, he established the Meiji Bijutsukai (Meiji Art Society), the first group of Western-style painters in Japan, and in 1898, he became a professor of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (present day Tokyo University of the Arts. However, in 1902 he resigned his post and travelled to France, where he spent the next two years refining his techniques in the impressionist school.
On his return to Japan, Asai obtained a position as professor at the Kyoto Kōtō Kōgei Gakkō (present day Kyoto School of Arts and Crafts of the Kyoto Institute of Technology), and founded the Kansai Bijutsu-in (the Kansai Arts Institute).
Asai taught numerous students who later became famous in the Japanese art world, including Sōtarō Yasui and Ryuzaburo Umehara. He also tutored the noted poet Masaoka Shiki in the techniques of western art, and was the model for a character in Natsume Sōseki’s novel Sanshirō.
A number of Asai’s works have been recognized by the Japanese government's Agency for Cultural Affairs as Important Cultural Properties.
収穫(Harvest) Artist Asai Chū Year 1890 Type Oil painting Dimensions 69.6 cm × 98.2 cm (27.4 in × 38.7 in) Location Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo Noted works
- Spring Ridge (春畝 Shunbo ), 1903, Tokyo National Museum, National Important Cultural Property
- Havest (収穫 Shukaku ), 1904, Tokyo University of the Arts, National Important Cultural Property [1]
Gallery
References
- Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West. Columbia University Press; (1998). ISBN 0231114354
- Mason, Penelope. History of Japanese Art . Prentice Hall (2005). ISBN 0131176021
- Miyoshi, Masao. Postmodernism and Japan. Duke University Press (1986) ISBN 0822308967
- Sadao, Tsuneko. Discovering the Arts of Japan: A Historical Overview. Kodansha International (2003). ISBN 477002939X
- Schaarschmidt Richte. Japanese Modern Art Painting From 1910 . Edition Stemmle. ISBN 3908161851
- Shiki, Masaoka. Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works. Cheng & Tsui (2002). ISBN 0887273645
- Weisenfeld, Gennifer. MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931. University of California Press (2001). ISBN 0520223381
External links
Categories:- 1856 births
- 1907 deaths
- Japanese painters
- People from Chiba Prefecture
- People in Meiji period Japan
- Japanese educators
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