Volume 1 -Uemura Shoen - 上村松園

Volume 1 - Uemura Shoen (上村松園) is catalogued on [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org through an Ohmi Gallery listing belonging to a series titled Complete Works of Modern Japanese Bijin, a print and book project that gathered representative beauty designs by leading nihonga painters of the Taisho and Showa eras. The first volume's dedication to Uemura Shoen reflects her status as the unrivalled leading figure of modern Japanese [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) and the most important woman painter of Kyoto nihonga. Born in 1875 in Kyoto and apprenticed from her teens to Suzuki Shonen, then to Kono Bairei and Takeuchi Seiho, Shoen built her career through the new state-sponsored exhibitions: she debuted at the Naikoku Kangyo Hakurankai while still a student, exhibited regularly at Bunten and Teiten, was appointed to the Imperial Art Academy, and in 1948 became the first woman to receive the Order of Culture. Volumes such as this one were produced in part to consolidate her position in the modern bijin-ga canon and to make her best-known compositions, including Mother and Child, Snow, Jo no Mai, and Late Autumn, available to collectors who could not own her original silk paintings. For students of Taisho-Showa bijin-ga, the volume is therefore valuable both as a corpus of designs and as a snapshot of how Shoen's circle and her later admirers defined her achievement. The Ohmi Gallery listing on ukiyo-e.org preserves the cover and selected pages; for full holdings, consult the Adachi Museum of Art, Yamatane Museum of Art, and Shohaku Art Museum. Source: ukiyo-e.org via Ohmi Gallery.