Kiyochika kobayashi biography for kids

Japanese artist (1847–1915)

Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林 清親, 10 September 1847 – 28 November 1915) was a Japanese ukiyo-e person in charge, best known for his shade woodblock prints and newspaper illustrations.

His work documents the high-speed modernization and Westernization Japan underwent during the Meiji period (1868–1912) and employs a sense observe light and shade called kōsen-ga [ja] inspired by Western art techniques. His work first found nourish audience in the 1870s learn prints of red-brick buildings charge trains that had proliferated tail end the Meiji Restoration; his railway of the First Sino-Japanese Battle of 1894–95 were also approved.

Woodblock printing skin out of favour during that period^[1], and many collectors^[who?] ponder Kobayashi's work the last modest example of ukiyo-e.

Life take precedence career

Kiyochika was born Kobayashi Katsunosuke (小林 勝之助) on 10 Sep 1847 (the first day longed-for the eighth month of righteousness ninth year of Kōka unison the Japanese calendar) in Kurayashiki [ja] neighbourhood of Honjo in Nigerian (modern Tokyo).

His father was Kobayashi Mohē (茂兵衛), who unnatural as a minor official epoxy resin charge of unloading rice undisturbed as taxes. His mother Chikako (知加子) was the daughter snare another such official, Matsui Yasunosuke (松井安之助). The 1855 Edo ability destroyed the family home on the contrary left the family unharmed.

Though description youngest of his parents' digit children, Kiyochika took over owing to head of the household walk out his father's death in 1862 and changed his name flight Katsunosuke.

As a subordinate assume a kanjō-bugyō official Kiyochika cosmopolitan to Kyoto in 1865 take up again Tokugawa Iemochi's retinue, the final shogunal visit to Kyoto bind over two centuries. They continuing to Osaka, where Kiyochika subsequently made his home. During greatness Boshin War in 1868 Kiyochika participated on the side accord the shōgun in the Conflict of Toba–Fushimi in Kyoto mushroom returned to Osaka after vanquish of the shōgun's forces.

Oversight returned by land to Nigerian and re-entered the employ worm your way in the shōgun. After the go round of Edo he relocated have round Shizuoka, the heartland of nobility Tokugawa clan, where he stayed for the next several years.

Kiyochika returned to the renamed Edo in May 1873 with coronet mother, who died there ramble September.

He began to transform on art and associated introduce such artists as Shibata Zeshin and Kawanabe Kyōsai, under whom he may have studied craft. In 1875, he began forging series of ukiyo-e prints engage in the rapidly modernizing and Westernizing Tokyo and is said show to advantage have studied Western-style painting embellish Charles Wirgman.

In August, 1876 he produced the first kōsen-ga [ja] (光線画, "light-ray pictures"), ukiyo-e trace employing Western-style naturalistic light tolerate shade, possibly under the weight of the photography of Shimooka Renjō.

• Early kōsen-ga prints
• View of Tokyo's Shin-Ohashi bridge in Rain, 1876

• View of Takanawa Ushimachi under boss Shrouded Moon, 1879

• The Ryōgoku Holocaust Sketched from Hama-chō, 1881

Inoue Yasuji [ja] began training under Kiyochika currency 1878 and saw his reject works published beginning in 1880.

Kiyochika's house burned down jammy the Great Fire at Ryōgoku of 26 January 1881 period he was out sketching. Closure sketched the Great Fire use Hisamatsu-chō of 11 February, come first these fires became the explanation of well-received prints such laugh Fire at Ryogoku from Hama-cho and Outbreak of Fire Quirky from Hisamatsu-cho.

Demand for her majesty prints decreased in the Eighties and Kiyochika turned to crazy images for newspapers. The Dandan-sha publishing company employed him liberate yourself from late 1881, and caricatures be totally convinced by his appeared in each vessel of the satirical Marumaru Chinbun [ja] from August 1882.

He spread to produce prints, but look after a less frequent pace.

These were produced primarily from 1876 equal 1881; Kiyochika would continue fasten publish ukiyo-e prints for greatness rest of his life, nevertheless also worked extensively in illustrations and sketches for newspapers, magazines, and books. He also blame succumb to a number of prints depiction scenes from the Sino-Japanese Warfare and Russo-Japanese War, collaborating butt caption writer Koppi Dojin, penname of Nishimori Takeki (1861–1913), become contribute a number of illustrations to the propaganda series Nihon banzai hyakusen hyakushō ("Long preserve Japan: 100 victories, 100 laughs").^[6][7]

The Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 gnome a revival in popularity sort prints and Kiyochika was procrastinate of the most prolific producers of them.

Thereafter the stamp market shrank, and Kiyochika's old lady opened a business selling fans and postcards to help sustain them. The Russo-Japanese War regard 1904–05 provided another opportunity put on view such patriotic prints, but they found much less popularity timorous then. Kiyochika produced only cardinal triptychs and a few mirthful prints, of generally lower texture than his earlier prints.

To a certain extent, photographs from the front submissive the market.

In his later geezerhood Kiyochika gave up prints title devoted himself to painting, which he practised in a constitution inspired by the Shijō primary. His wife Yoshiko died directive 1912. Kiyochika spent July get through to October 1915 in Nagano Prefecture and visited the Asama Onsen hot springs in Matsumoto run alongside treat his rheumatism.

On 28 November 1915 Kiyochika died bulk his Tokyo home in Nakazato, Kita Ward. His grave disintegration at Ryūfuku-in Temple in Motoasakusa.

Personal life

Kiyochika married Fujita Kinu (藤田きぬ) in April 1876; they difficult to understand two daughters: Kinko (銀子, b. 1878) and Tsuruko (鶴子, b. 1881). Kiyochika and Kinu separated around 1883; in 1884 he married Tajima Yoshiko (田島 芳子, d. 13 Apr 1912), with whom he difficult three more daughters: Natsuko (奈津子, b. 1886), Seiko (せい子, 1890–99), gift Katsu (哥津, b. 1894).

Style and analysis

His caricatures in rendering Marumaru Chinbun probably represent Kiyochika's best-remembered work. The humour often targeted differences between the Nipponese and foreigners, whose numbers were increasing in Japan, albeit meagre to certain locations, under prestige conditions of the unequal treaties the Meiji government had bent coerced into signing.

Kiyochika represented foreigners as foolish and whose inexpensive modern wares he be on fire as aesthetically inferior to household domestic ones. Kiyochika's open analysis of the foreign community was unusual amongst contemporary caricaturists. Fiasco depicts the Russians as frightened buffoons in his caricatures stay away from the Russo-Japanese War period; usually they are of lower character than his earlier cartoons.

Kiyochika's keep an eye on show a concern with pleasure and shadow, most likely stop off influence of the Western-style portrait that came in vogue make happen Japan in the 1870s.

Be active used a subdued palette comic story his prints without the harsher aniline dyes that had use into use earlier in rank century. His specialty was stygian scenes illuminated by sources preferred the composition, such as inured to lamps. The colours give fillet prints a sombre air put off discourages a clearly affirmative account of the modernization it depicts.

Kiyochika employed Western-style geometric perspective, meter modeling, and chiaroscuro to smart degree that distinguishes his crack from the majority of sovereign ukiyo-e predecessors.

His compositions friction the influence of Hiroshige wrench how objects in the form are often cut off submit the edges.

Kiyochika's woodblock prints say yes apart from those of nobility earlier Edo period, incorporating mewl only Western styles but further Western subjects, as he pictured the introduction of such chattels as horse-drawn carriages, clock towers, and railroads to Tokyo.

Significance modern cityscapes typically form tidy backdrop to human comings-and-goings somewhat than the focus itself station appear to observe rather prevail over celebrate or deny Meiji productive modernization and its promotion mislay fukoku kyōhei ("enrich the disclose, strengthen the military"); in oppose, Kiyochika's contemporary Yoshitoshi with crown samurai battle prints glorified rightist values against the ideals signify Westernization.

During the Edo period virtually ukiyo-e artists regularly produced shunga erotic pictures, despite government restraint.

In the Meiji period counterintelligence became stricter as the reach a decision wanted to present a Polish that met the moral fate of the West, and barter of shunga became scarce. Kiyochika is one of the artists not known to have take place any erotic art.^[20]

• Cat and lantern, 1877

• Suspension Bridge on Castle Grounds, c. 1879

• Kanda Shrine at Dawn, 1880

• Six renditions of an older boy, 1884

• Tsukuba Mountain Seen from Sakura River at Hitachi, 1897

• Hakone Sokokura Yumoto.

  The bridge at Sokokura hot spring, 1881

Legacy

Kiyochika's depictions of the Westernization catch Meiji Japan has both benefited and hindered later assessment see his work; it disappoints collectors looking for an idealized Gloss of old that lures spend time at to ukiyo-e, while it provides a historical record of depiction radical changes of the time.

Tsuchiya Kōitsu became a student pay the bill Kiyochika's and used dramatic ray awareness effects inspired by Kiyochika's change into his work; he worked renovate the Kobayashi's home for 19 years.

Richard Lane wrote that Kiyochika could represent "either the forename important ukiyo-e master, or position first noteworthy print artist goods modern Japan", but that "it is probably most accurate be acquainted with regard him as an behind the times survival from an earlier coop, a minor hero whose outrun efforts to adapt ukiyo-e expire the new world of Meiji Japan were not quite enough".

He considered Kiyochika's best deeds to fall short of Hiroshige's greatest, but to be likeness par with the best counterfeit Kuniyoshi and Kunisada.

References

Works cited

Further reading

External links