Kyoto Prefectural Painting School

• Founded: 1880, Kôno Bairei, Kubota Beisen, Mochizuki Gyokusen et al.
• Japanese: 京都府画学校 (Kyouto-fu ga gakkou)

The Kyoto Prefecture Painting School was co-founded in 1880 by a handful of Nihonga painters including Kôno Bairei, Kubota Beisen, Mochizuki Gyokusen. It formed the foundation of what is today known as the Kyoto City University of Arts (Kyôto shiritsu geijutsu daigaku).

Bairei, Beisen, Gyokusen and the others began petitioning the Kyoto prefecture government to authorize and fund such a school two years prior.

Once it opened, Bairei taught Northern School styles of painting for a period, before a dispute between he and Suzuki Hyakunen led to both men leaving the school. Bairei returned in 1888, then left once more in 1890 amid controversy over changes he had proposed. Meanwhile, Bairei had secured a teaching job for one of his students, Takeuchi Seihô, beginning around 1883; Seihô would remain at the school for roughly thirty years.

References

• Berry, Paul and Michiyo Morioka (eds.) Literati Modern: Bunjinga from Late Edo to Twentieth-Century Japan. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2008. pp277-279.
• Conant, Ellen. "Cut from Kyoto Cloth: Takeuchi Seihô and his Artistic Milieu." Impressions 33 (2012). p78.