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senzenwomen2024-04-12 07:25 pm
nnozomi) wrote in senzenwomen2024-04-12 07:25 pm
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Yamashita Rin (1857-1939)
Yamashita Rin was born in 1857 in present-day Ibaraki. Her father was a minor samurai reduced to poverty in the runup to the Meiji Restoration, and the family struggled even more after his death when she was seven. When she was old enough to marry, it was suggested that she wed a local farmer, since that would at least mean enough to eat. Rin, however, had been determined from childhood to study art. In 1872, she ran away to Tokyo, walking all the way, only to be summarily returned home by the relatives she found to stay with. Impressed by her determination, her mother permitted her to return to Tokyo the following year.
There she worked as a maid in the house of the woodblock artist Toyohara Kunichika, living in and copying his paintings as a method of study. Developing an interest in the newly discovered Western painting styles as well, she went to study with the cutting-edge Western-style yōga painter Nakamaru Seijuro. When the (unusually, coeducational) Technical Fine Arts School opened in 1876, employing a number of Italian teachers, she enrolled in the painting department (with fees paid by the former domain lord of her native region) and studied Western-style painting with Antonio Fontanesi.
In 1880 she was given the opportunity to study in Russia, replacing her classmate Varvara Yamamuro Masako; the Russian Orthodox missionary Father Nikolai had seen and liked Masako’s paintings and offered her the spot, but Masako had unthoughtfully gotten married instead, so Rin was selected in her place. Upon Masako’s introduction, she was also baptized by Father Nikolai, choosing Irina as her Russian name. She left Japan on a French ship at the end of 1880 and traveled for fifty days via Hong Kong, Singapore, the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Bosporus to arrive in the Black Sea. From the port of Odessa she took the train to Moscow and then [St.] Petersburg, where she studied at the Novodevichy Convent and was taught to paint Russian Orthodox icons. Frustrated by their limitations, she obtained permission to visit the Hermitage Museum as well—but only for a scant three months, as the Convent disapproved of the Italians. The artistic limitations placed on her led to a depression; the diaries she initially kept in detail featured complaints like “icons are monster pictures, I want to paint like Raphael” and then petered out, and she cut her five-year visit down to three years, returning to Japan in 1883.
Though initially disposed to leave the church, she soon returned. Given an atelier in the Orthodox cathedral’s Tokyo seminary for women, she began, after some time, to paint icons and teach Russian there. She remained lifelong friends with Father Nikolai, who encouraged her to import some of the Italianate art style she preferred into her icon work. Her paintings number over 300, not all signed. By 1918, her vision was declining due to cataracts; in addition, the Russian Revolution had reduced the strength of the Orthodox church in Japan. She returned to her hometown, where she lived as a farmer and enjoyed her daily dose of sake. She died in 1939 at the age of 83.
Sources
Nakae
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/bg900319/ (English) Article quoting the author of a novel based on Rin’s life
https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2020/11/irina-yamashita-the-first-japanese-icon-painter (English) Very religious site! which does provide a lot of details and also numerous reproductions of Rin’s works
https://ebiaki.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%8B%E3%82%8A%E3%82%93/ (Japanese) Article discussing some of Rin’s inner struggles, with photographs of her hometown
There she worked as a maid in the house of the woodblock artist Toyohara Kunichika, living in and copying his paintings as a method of study. Developing an interest in the newly discovered Western painting styles as well, she went to study with the cutting-edge Western-style yōga painter Nakamaru Seijuro. When the (unusually, coeducational) Technical Fine Arts School opened in 1876, employing a number of Italian teachers, she enrolled in the painting department (with fees paid by the former domain lord of her native region) and studied Western-style painting with Antonio Fontanesi.
In 1880 she was given the opportunity to study in Russia, replacing her classmate Varvara Yamamuro Masako; the Russian Orthodox missionary Father Nikolai had seen and liked Masako’s paintings and offered her the spot, but Masako had unthoughtfully gotten married instead, so Rin was selected in her place. Upon Masako’s introduction, she was also baptized by Father Nikolai, choosing Irina as her Russian name. She left Japan on a French ship at the end of 1880 and traveled for fifty days via Hong Kong, Singapore, the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the Bosporus to arrive in the Black Sea. From the port of Odessa she took the train to Moscow and then [St.] Petersburg, where she studied at the Novodevichy Convent and was taught to paint Russian Orthodox icons. Frustrated by their limitations, she obtained permission to visit the Hermitage Museum as well—but only for a scant three months, as the Convent disapproved of the Italians. The artistic limitations placed on her led to a depression; the diaries she initially kept in detail featured complaints like “icons are monster pictures, I want to paint like Raphael” and then petered out, and she cut her five-year visit down to three years, returning to Japan in 1883.
Though initially disposed to leave the church, she soon returned. Given an atelier in the Orthodox cathedral’s Tokyo seminary for women, she began, after some time, to paint icons and teach Russian there. She remained lifelong friends with Father Nikolai, who encouraged her to import some of the Italianate art style she preferred into her icon work. Her paintings number over 300, not all signed. By 1918, her vision was declining due to cataracts; in addition, the Russian Revolution had reduced the strength of the Orthodox church in Japan. She returned to her hometown, where she lived as a farmer and enjoyed her daily dose of sake. She died in 1939 at the age of 83.
Sources
Nakae
https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/bg900319/ (English) Article quoting the author of a novel based on Rin’s life
https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2020/11/irina-yamashita-the-first-japanese-icon-painter (English) Very religious site! which does provide a lot of details and also numerous reproductions of Rin’s works
https://ebiaki.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/%E5%B1%B1%E4%B8%8B%E3%82%8A%E3%82%93/ (Japanese) Article discussing some of Rin’s inner struggles, with photographs of her hometown