Takeuchi Seiho

• Born: 1864/11/22
• Died: 1942/8/23
• Other Names: 竹内恒吉 (Takeuchi Tsunekichi)
• Japanese: 竹内栖鳳 (Takeuchi Seihou)

Takeuchi Seihô was a prominent Kyoto Nihonga painter, perhaps most famous for his monochrome ink landscapes incorporating the realism of Western oil painting; however, Seihô was a prolific artist with a varied oeuvre, including not only ink landscapes with Western realism, but also full-color bijinga in a neo-ukiyo-e mode, ceramics, bronze sculpture, paintings on kimono, among other modes and subjects.

He taught students in his private studio for roughly forty years, and taught at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts for roughly thirty; his students included Tsuchida Bakusen, Uemura Shôen, and Nishiyama Suishô, who would each go on to become prominent Nihonga painters in their own right.

Biography

He was born Takeuchi Tsunekichi and raised in Kyoto, taking on the art-name Seihô later in life.

Seihô studied under Kôno Bairei, before leaving on his first and only trip to Europe in 1900-1901. While in Europe, he tried his hand at oil painting, and developed a fondness in particular for the works of JMW Turner and Barbizon school painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.

After his return, he produced a number of byôbu (folding screen) paintings aimed at commercial sale, in order to help fund the purchase of instructional materials for his teaching practice.

Though his works vary greatly, in many of his works, he is said to have "liked to work with a limited palate [sic] of subtle gradation and relied upon the tactile quality of the picture plane to animate the surface and enliven the scene." Combining the brushwork style of the Maruyama-Shijô schools of traditional ink painting with elements of Western painting methods, he created his own distinct style for painting landscapes and other subjects.

He built a house near the temple of Kôdai-ji in Kyoto's Higashiyama district in 1929.

Always quite prominent and active in the Kyoto art world, Seihô regularly served as a jury member for the Bunten from its establishment in 1907 onwards, and earned numerous awards for his own works at various exhibitions. He was named an Imperial Household Artist in 1914, and was commissioned by the Imperial Household Agency to produce a pair of screens commemorating the coronation of the Taishô Emperor.

Seihô received high praise from Kaburaki Kiyotaka, a prominent Tokyo painter in his own right; Kiyotaka is quoted as saying "In today's painting world, if we were to find a meijin (master artist), it can be no one but Seihô. ... There is a good chance that Seihô is the very last meijin."

In 1937, Seihô became, along with Yokoyama Taikan, one of the first two Nihonga artists to be awarded the Order of Cultural Merit. He died five years later.

References

• Conant, Ellen. "Cut from Kyoto Cloth: Takeuchi Seihô and his Artistic Milieu." Impressions 33 (2012). pp71-93.
• "Takeuchi Seihô." Digital-ban Nihon jinmei daijiten デジタル版 日本人名大辞典. Kodansha, 2009.