was a Japanese painter, noted for his work in combining Japanese legends and religious subjects with the '' yōga'' (Western-style) art movement in late 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese painting.

Biography

Aoki was born to an ex- samurai class household in Kurume, in northern

Kyūshū is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surround ...

, Japan, where his father had been a retainer of the Arima clan daimyō of

Kurume Domain was a Japanese domain of the Edo period. It was associated with Chikugo Province in modern-day Fukuoka Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. In the han system, Kurume was a political and economic abstraction based on periodic cadastral surveys ...

. Although his family strongly disapproved of his interest in art, he left home in 1899 to pursue his studies in Tokyo, first with Koyama Shōtarō, a pupil of the Italian foreign advisor

Antonio Fontanesi Antonio Fontanesi (23 February 1818 – 17 April 1882) was an Italian painter who lived in Meiji period Japan between 1876 and 1878. He introduced European oil painting techniques to Japan, and exerted a significant role in the development of mo ...

, who had been hired by the Meiji government in the late 1870s to introduce western oil painting to Japan. From 1900 he became a pupil of Kuroda Seiki, then an instructor at the Tōkyō Bijutsu Gakkō (present-day

Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music or is the most prestigious art school in Japan. Located in Ueno Park, it also has facilities in Toride, Ibaraki, Yokohama, Kanagawa, and Kitasenju and Adachi, Tokyo. The university has trained renowned artists in the fields of painting, scul ...

). In the autumn of 1902, he travelled to Mount Myōgi in Gunma Prefecture and to

Nagano Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...

on a sketching excursion. After his return, he displayed some of his completed works at Kuroda's 8th ''Hakuba-kai'' Exhibition, where his use of the techniques of the

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

combined with themes from the ''

Kojiki The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperia ...

'' resulted in great critical acclaim. Aoki finished his studies in 1904. In August 1905, he relocated to what is now Chikusei, Ibaraki, where he had a son by his

common law wife Common-law marriage, also known as non-ceremonial marriage, marriage, informal marriage, or marriage by habit and repute, is a legal framework where a couple may be considered married without having formally registered their relation as a civil ...

Tane Fukuda. The son (Rando Fukuda, 1905–1976) would later become a noted ''

shakuhachi A is a Japanese and ancient Chinese longitudinal, end-blown flute that is made of bamboo. The bamboo end-blown flute now known as the was developed in Japan in the 16th century and is called the .

'' musician. However, Fukuda returned home to take care of her ill father in August 1907, the relationship came to an end. From October 1908, he abandoned his house and went on an extended painting trip, creating numerous works, but never settling in any location for an extended period of time. In March 1911, he checked into a hospital in Fukuoka suffering from tuberculosis, where he died at the age of 28. A number of Aoki's works have been collected by the Ishibashi Museum of Art in his hometown of Kurume, two of which have been recognized by the Japanese government's

Agency for Cultural Affairs The is a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). It was set up in 1968 to promote Japanese arts and culture. The agency's budget for FY 2018 rose to ¥107.7 billion. Overview The ag ...

as Important Cultural Properties.

Noted works

*, 1903, Tokyo University of the Art

*, 1904, Bridgestone Art Museum *, 1904, Ishibashi Museum of Art, National Important Cultural Property

*, 1905, Ishibashi Museum of Art *, 1906, Tokyo National Museum *, 1907 (Ishibashi Museum of Art), National Important Cultural Propert

References

* Keene, Donald. ''Dawn to the West''. Columbia University Press; (1998). * Mason, Penelope. ''History of Japanese Art ''. Prentice Hall (2005). * Sadao, Tsuneko. ''Discovering the Arts of Japan: A Historical Overview''. Kodansha International (2003). * Schaarschmidt Richte. ''Japanese Modern Art Painting From 1910 ''. Edition Stemmle. * Weisenfeld, Gennifer. ''MAVO: Japanese Artists and the Avant-Garde, 1905-1931''. University of California Press (2001).

External links

Ishibashi Museum of Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aoki, Shigeru 1882 births 1911 deaths People from Kurume 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in Japan 20th-century Japanese painters s Shigeru Aoki