The Inspiring Story of Uemura Shōen

The trailblazing Japanese painter Uemura Shōen was born shortly after Japan’s Edo period ended, a time during which women who could paint were considered cultured and greatly admired – as long as they did it behind closed doors. When an upper-class woman married, she would take a konrei chōdo (bridal furnishing set) to her new marital home that would often include brushes and painting supplies; she could paint freely (in private) or in front of friends, but it would be nothing beyond a hobby. The only way a woman could advance her skills beyond that was if she had an artistic family member who could train her in her own home, as was the case with the renowned female painter Kiyohara Yukinobu.

An ambitious woman herself, Shōen’s mother supported her daughter's decision to pursue a career in painting and sent her to the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School when she was 12. Here she began studying under the Chinese-style landscape painter Suzuki Shōnen, who rewarded her talents by giving her the first kanji (Chinese characters that are used in the Japanese writing system) of his pseudonym (Shō) to use in hers. He also let her pursue figure painting, even though this wasn’t permitted by the school until the later years of training.

Another consistent theme in her work was incorporating elements from tradition Noh narratives, a major form of classical Japanese musical drama. Her work Jo-no-mai is named for the dance performed in the introduction of a Noh play. Female roles in Noh performances were often played by men, but Shōen used women to recreate these roles for her paintings.

At 15, Shōen became a celebrity in the art world when her painting, The Beauty of Four Seasons, was purchased by the Duke of Connaught, the son of Queen Victoria, who was visiting Japan. The resulting boost in her reputation meant that she began winning commissions from private patrons. Soon after, the Japanese government selected her, along with some other prominent artists to have her work shown at the World Exposition in Chicago in 1893, however Shōen was the youngest and one of the only ones not from the far more advanced Tokyo art scene. Shōen won her first award in 1898 for a work she has selected to be displayed in the "Shinko Bijutsu Tenrankai" (Exhibition of New and Old Art) in Kyoto. Her first national award, in 1900, was for a painting she submitted to an exhibition sponsored by the Japan Fine Arts Academy.

Shōen led what was seen as an unconventional life; not only did she work as a painter, but she also never married, had a child out of wedlock, and raised him as a single mother. She broke boundaries, worked relentlessly, and accomplished some incredible firsts, possessing the same quiet but determined will of the women she depicted in her paintings. She made a major contribution to modern art in Japan and paved the way for future women artists. She died in 1949, a year after becoming the first woman to win the Order of Culture, proving that painting could be far more than a hobby.