Maruyama Ōkyo
Maruyama Ōkyo (円山 応挙, traditional characters: 圓山 應舉?, June 12, 1733 – August 31, 1795), born Maruyama Masataka, was a Japanese artist active in the late 18th century. He moved to Kyoto, during which he studied artworks from Chinese, Japanese and Western sources. A personal style of Western naturalism mixed with Eastern decorative design emerged, and Ōkyo founded the Maruyama school of painting. Although many of his fellow artists criticized his work as too slavishly devoted to natural representation, it proved a success with laymen.
Ōkyo was born into a farming family in Ano-o, in present-day Kameoka, Kyoto. As a teenager, he moved to Kyoto and joined the townspeople (chōnin) class. He apprenticed for a toy shop, where he painted the faces onto dolls. The shop began selling European stereoscopes, novelties that when looked into presented the illusion of a three-dimensional image. It was Ōkyo's first look at Western-style perspective, and in 1767 he tried his hand at one of the images. He created Harbour View, a small picture in single-point perspective. Ōkyo soon mastered the techniques of drawing stereoscope images (megane-e, eyeglass pictures).
Ōkyo decided to pursue a career as an artist. He first studied under Ishida Yūtei, a member of the Kanō school and ultimately a bigger influence on Ōkyo than the stereoscope images. During these formative years, Ōkyo studied Chinese painting as well. He particularly admired the works of Ch'ien Hsüan, a 13th-century painter known for his detailed flower drawings, and Qiu Ying, a 16th-century figure painter. In fact, the "kyo" in Ōkyo's name was adopted in tribute to Ch'ien Hsüan. Ōkyo even briefly adopted the Chinese practice of signing his name with one character, so for a time he was known as Ōkyo En. He studied the works of Shen Quan, a Chinese artist who lived in Nagasaki from 1731 to 1733 and painted images of flowers. However, Ōkyo did not like the artist's treatment of proportion, preferring the works of Watanabe Shikō. He also studied Ming and Qing paintings. Perhaps most significantly, Ōkyo eagerly studied any Western paintings or prints he could find.
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