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Uemura Shoen (1875-1949)
Jan. 31st, 2025 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiUemura Shoen was born in 1875 in Kyoto, the daughter of Uemura Naka, a tea-leaf merchant’s daughter, and her adopted-husband, who died before Shoen was born. Naka raised her daughter, whose birth name was Tsune, while running the family business; noting that from early childhood Tsune spent her playtime drawing pictures, Naka sent her to the Kyoto Prefectural School of Art.
There she studied with the classical Japanese painter Suzuki Shonen, who was impressed with his one female student; although she liked her teacher, Tsune was frustrated by the boys’ teasing and even more so by the endless assignments of traditional nature topics, when she wanted to draw people. Paintings of beautiful women had gone out of fashion with the Edo period twenty years before, however. Although she received one of Suzuki’s penname characters in her own, becoming Uemura Shoen, Tsune continued her study on her own. She drew herself in the mirror [her “Self-Portrait at 16” is the icon I use for this community, much obliged] and borrowed the neighborhood girls to use as models; come the Gion Festival, when Edo-period screens decorated the entryways of Kyoto’s great houses, she took a packed lunch and spent the day ecstatically sketching.
In 1890, Shoen’s “Beauties of Four Seasons” took first prize at the National Industrial Exhibition; it was purchased by the Duke of Connaught, who happened to be visiting Japan at the time. Shoen was fifteen years old. Over the next decade, her paintings won awards no matter where she submitted them; she also began to receive numerous proposals of marriage, all of which she turned down. She spent time studying with the painters Kono Bairei and Takeuchi Seiho. In 1900, her “Blooming Flowers” took first prize at the Japan Painting Exhibition, bringing her fame throughout Japan; her “Mother and Child” was also exhibited at the Paris World Fair.
Two years later, Shoen gave birth to a boy she named Shintaro. The theory widely believed is that his father was Suzuki Shonen, her old teacher, but Shoen never told anyone, even Shintaro herself, the name of her son’s father. Shintaro was raised by his grandmother Naka, who was determined to let Shoen devote herself to her painting. He eventually took the name Uemura Shoko and became a painter in his own right, going from a little boy entering his mother’s studio only to be told “hush, don’t move” to a fellow artist painting alongside her late into the night.
Shoen served as an Imperial Household Artist from 1904 to 1917, only the second woman after Noguchi Shohin to do so. In her later years she was appointed to various highly prestigious art juries, often as the first woman to hold the position. During World War II, her paintings depicted the war effort and women in moments of everyday life; as a “homefront artist” she traveled to China on a government-sponsored propaganda trip. In 1948, she became the first woman to receive the Order of Culture. She died the following year, surrounded by her family.
Her paintings, influenced by Edo-period ukiyoe, woodblock prints, and Noh drama, focused on beautiful women; famous works other than those noted above include “Flame,” apparently painted in a season of struggle, “Yang Guifei,” “Noh Dance Prelude” (for which her daughter-in-law Taneko is thought to have modeled), and “Woman Walking Through a Snowstorm” among many others.
Sources
Mori 1996
https://art.nikkei.com/shoen/exhibition/ (Japanese) Beautiful reproductions of several paintings
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/shoen-uemura/ (English) Brief article with links to other related articles
There she studied with the classical Japanese painter Suzuki Shonen, who was impressed with his one female student; although she liked her teacher, Tsune was frustrated by the boys’ teasing and even more so by the endless assignments of traditional nature topics, when she wanted to draw people. Paintings of beautiful women had gone out of fashion with the Edo period twenty years before, however. Although she received one of Suzuki’s penname characters in her own, becoming Uemura Shoen, Tsune continued her study on her own. She drew herself in the mirror [her “Self-Portrait at 16” is the icon I use for this community, much obliged] and borrowed the neighborhood girls to use as models; come the Gion Festival, when Edo-period screens decorated the entryways of Kyoto’s great houses, she took a packed lunch and spent the day ecstatically sketching.
In 1890, Shoen’s “Beauties of Four Seasons” took first prize at the National Industrial Exhibition; it was purchased by the Duke of Connaught, who happened to be visiting Japan at the time. Shoen was fifteen years old. Over the next decade, her paintings won awards no matter where she submitted them; she also began to receive numerous proposals of marriage, all of which she turned down. She spent time studying with the painters Kono Bairei and Takeuchi Seiho. In 1900, her “Blooming Flowers” took first prize at the Japan Painting Exhibition, bringing her fame throughout Japan; her “Mother and Child” was also exhibited at the Paris World Fair.
Two years later, Shoen gave birth to a boy she named Shintaro. The theory widely believed is that his father was Suzuki Shonen, her old teacher, but Shoen never told anyone, even Shintaro herself, the name of her son’s father. Shintaro was raised by his grandmother Naka, who was determined to let Shoen devote herself to her painting. He eventually took the name Uemura Shoko and became a painter in his own right, going from a little boy entering his mother’s studio only to be told “hush, don’t move” to a fellow artist painting alongside her late into the night.
Shoen served as an Imperial Household Artist from 1904 to 1917, only the second woman after Noguchi Shohin to do so. In her later years she was appointed to various highly prestigious art juries, often as the first woman to hold the position. During World War II, her paintings depicted the war effort and women in moments of everyday life; as a “homefront artist” she traveled to China on a government-sponsored propaganda trip. In 1948, she became the first woman to receive the Order of Culture. She died the following year, surrounded by her family.
Her paintings, influenced by Edo-period ukiyoe, woodblock prints, and Noh drama, focused on beautiful women; famous works other than those noted above include “Flame,” apparently painted in a season of struggle, “Yang Guifei,” “Noh Dance Prelude” (for which her daughter-in-law Taneko is thought to have modeled), and “Woman Walking Through a Snowstorm” among many others.
Sources
Mori 1996
https://art.nikkei.com/shoen/exhibition/ (Japanese) Beautiful reproductions of several paintings
https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/shoen-uemura/ (English) Brief article with links to other related articles
