Books, Manuscripts, and Illustration

Korean calligrapher. He is considered one of the last great calligraphers of the Koryŏ period (918–1392). Born into a noble family, at the age of 17 he passed his first examinations and entered the Confucian academy in Kaesŏng, where he eventually rose to prominence in the central administration. Information on his life, and in particular on his career as an official, can be found in the ...

English illustrator and author. From 1905 he grew up in England, becoming a professional artist in 1926 after part-time study at the Westminster School of Art, London. He became known as an illustrator of genre scenes in a variety of media, often with a comic Victorian flavour. He was best known for illustrated stories, the first of which, ...

Japanese, 20th century, male.

Born 1882, in Yokohama; died 1974.

Painter, illustrator.

Groups: Issuikai, Nitten.

Ikuma Arishima studied under Fujishima Takeji, a painter with leanings towards Western art. He was a member of the Issui-kai and the Nitten and subsequently founded the Nika-kai . In 1923...

Japanese painter, book illustrator and art educator. Born the fourth son of Yasuda Shirobei, a Kyoto moneylender, the young Bairei was adopted into the Kōno family. In 1852 he began his artistic training under the Maruyama-school painter, Nakajima Raishō (1796–1871). After Raishō’s death, Bairei studied with the Shijō-school master ...

Japanese calligrapher. Together with Maki Ryōko and Nukina Kaioku, he was one of the Bakumatsu no Sanpitsu (‘Three Brushes of the late Edo period’). His powerful brushwork, known as the Beian ryū (Beian school or style), continued to be much admired into the Meiji period (...

Japanese, 19th century, male.

Born 1852; died 1906.

Painter.

Beisen was a pupil of Suzuki Hyakumen. Known mainly as an illustrator, he painted figures and landscapes.

Chinese installation artist . Xu Bing spent much of his childhood in Beijing where his parents were professors at Beijing University. He said that being surrounded by books during this formative period in his life gave him an intense interest in them. Xu studied printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (...

Chinese calligrapher, minor painter and seal-carver. He passed the civil service examination to become a jinshi in 1789. He then had a series of official posts, serving on the Board of Justice, as an examiner and as a prefectural magistrate first at Huizhou in Guangdong Province and then at Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. Yi is generally recognized as a leading figure in the stele studies (...

Japanese Zen monk, scholar, calligrapher, poet and painter. He began his training as a monk at Nanzenji in Kyoto, under Shun’oku Myōha, the nephew and disciple of Musō Sōseki, one of the leading Zen prelates of the Muromachi period (1333–1568). His other teachers included the Zen recluse Shakushitsu Genkō and Gidō Shūshin, under whom he studied literature. A trusted adviser of the fourth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimochi, Gyokuen was appointed to the prestigious abbacies of Kenninji (...

Japanese painter, poet, calligrapher and book illustrator. The son of an Edo merchant, he studied calligraphy from a very early age under the noted Chinese-style calligrapher Mitsui Shinna (1700–82). He also received a Confucian education, unusual at that time for a merchant’s son. From about ...