Uemura Shōen
The first female master of nihonga.
Uemura Shōen painted women in kimono, bijinga, from a woman's perspective and became the first woman to receive the Order of Culture.
Uemura Shōen was born in Kyoto in 1875. Her father died before she was born, and her mother ran a tea shop on her own and brought up her daughters. Her mother supported her daughter's interest in art, which was unusual for a girl at the time. Shōen began studying painting at the age of twelve, first under Suzuki Shōnen and later under Kōno Bairei and Takeuchi Seihō, leading painters in Kyoto.
As early as 1890, at only fifteen, she won a prize at a national industrial exhibition for a picture of women in the four seasons of the year. Thereafter she took part regularly in the major official exhibitions and became one of the few women to succeed in the male-dominated art world. She specialised in bijinga, pictures of beautiful women, but wanted to show women with dignity and inner strength rather than as objects of the male gaze.
Among her best-known works are Flame from 1918, which shows a jealous woman from The Tale of Genji and is in the Tokyo National Museum, and Jo-no-mai from 1936, a young woman dancing the prelude to a Noh dance, which belongs to the Tokyo University of the Arts and is designated an Important Cultural Property. Her technique rests on very fine, assured lines, carefully studied kimono patterns and clear mineral pigments on silk.
Shōen's private life was unconventional. In 1902 she had a son out of wedlock, Uemura Shōkō, who also became a painter, and she never married. She worked with discipline throughout her life and wrote essays about her art. In 1948 she became the first woman to receive the Order of Culture, Japan's highest distinction in the field of culture.
She died in 1949. Her son and grandson, Uemura Atsushi, carried on the family's artistic tradition, and the Shōhaku Art Museum in Nara shows works by all three generations. Today Shōen is seen as a pioneer for women artists in Japan and as one of the foremost masters of nihonga.