17 Facts About Tomioka Tessai

Tomioka Tessai was the pseudonym for a painter and calligrapher in imperial Japan.

Tomioka Tessai is regarded as the last major artist in the Bunjinga tradition and one of the first major artists of the Nihonga style.

Tomioka Tessai was educated as a scholar in classical Chinese philosophy and literature and the ancient Japanese classics under noted kokugaku scholar Okuni Tadamasa.

The family fortunes declined, and young Tomioka Tessai became a page at a Shinto shrine.

Tomioka Tessai developed his own style over the next decade or so, studying under a number of accomplished painters.

In 1861, Tomioka Tessai opened a private school in Rengetsu's house to teach painting; he went on to become a teacher at the newly inaugurated Ritsumeikan University in 1868.

Tomioka Tessai did some work for the new Meiji government, contributing maps and topographical charts he created.

Tomioka Tessai was able to see many different sides of the country all the way from Nagasaki to Hokkaido.

Tomioka Tessai served as a Shinto priest at a number of different shrines, but ultimately resigned from his final post when his brother died, so that he could look after his mother.

Tomioka Tessai tended towards use of rich colors to portray scenes of people in landscapes, with a composition intended to evoke or illustrate a historical or literary episode.

Tomioka Tessai sometimes made use of religious imagery, combining depictions of Buddhist bodhisattva with Daoist or Confucian figures to symbolize the unity of Asian religious traditions.

Tomioka Tessai took part in the founding of several other art associations, including the Nanga Association of Japan.

Tomioka Tessai's mother died in 1895, but Tessai continued to have close relations with his family and gained a granddaughter several years later.

Tomioka Tessai was appointed a member of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy in 1919.

Tomioka Tessai was an extremely prolific painter, and it is estimated that he painted approximately 20,000 paintings in the course of his career.

The largest collection of Tomioka Tessai's works is at the Tomioka Tessai Memorial Museum, a private art museum within the grounds of the Kiyoshikojin Seicho-ji, a Buddhist temple in Takarazuka, Hyogo.

Tomioka Tessai's art is kept in the Princeton University Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art, the National Museum of Asian Art, the British Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.