Search Results

Japanese region in Buzen Province (now part of Fukuoka Prefect.), northern Kyushu, where stonewares were manufactured at various sites from c. 1600 (see also Japan, §IX, 3, (i), (d)).

The first potter to make Agano ware was the Korean master Chon’gye (Jap. Sonkai; 1576–1654). Deported to Kyushu during one of the Japanese invasions of Korea in 1592 and 1597, he entered the service of Hosokawa Tadaoki (1563–1645), the newly appointed governor of Buzen. On the completion of Tadaoki’s fortress at Kokura (now Kitakyushu), Chon’gye built the Saienba kiln, probably within the castle precincts. A site thought to be Saienba was found beneath Myōkōji, the temple that replaced the castle in 1679, and excavations took place between 1979 and 1983. Sherds of both tea ceremony and everyday wares have been found there; they have transparent glazes made with a wood-ash flux, opaque glazes made with a straw-ash flux or brown-black glazes pigmented with iron oxide. Inscriptions on surviving pieces and entries in contemporary diaries indicate that these early products were also called Buzen or Kokura ware. After a few years the Saienba kiln closed, and ...

(b Maidstone, Kent, April 10, 1767; d Maidstone, July 23, 1816).

English painter, engraver, draughtsman and museum official. The son of a coachbuilder, he was apprenticed to Julius Caesar Ibbetson before enrolling in 1784 at the Royal Academy Schools, London. In 1792 he accepted the post (previously declined by Ibbetson) of draughtsman to George, 1st Earl Macartney, on his embassy to China. As the embassy returned by inland waterway from Beijing to Canton, Alexander made detailed sketches of the Chinese hinterland—something achieved by no British artist previously and by very few subsequently. These sketches formed the basis for finished watercolours (e.g. Ping-tze Muen, the Western Gate of Peking, 1799; London, BM) and for numerous engravings by both himself and others. For over fifty years his images of China were widely borrowed by book illustrators and by interior decorators in search of exotic themes.

Alexander was also a keen student of British medieval antiquities, undertaking several tours in order to make drawings of churches and monuments; many of these were reproduced in the antiquarian publications of ...

Japanese, 18th–19th century, male.

Born 1748, in Sukagawa; died 1822.

Painter, engraver (etching). Landscapes.

Yoga School.

Denzen Aodo belonged to the Yoga School, but studied Nanga painting under Gessen. He later became interested in Western painting. Aodo was a landscape painter who served Lord Matsudaira....

Region in Japan, now part of Saga Prefecture, and the name of a type of porcelain first produced there during the early Edo period (1600–1868). The ware was originally known as Imari yaki (‘Imari ware’) because it was shipped from the port of Imari (Saga Prefect.). During the Meiji period (1868–1912) porcelain was produced throughout the country. The need to distinguish it from other porcelain wares led to the use of the name Arita (Arita yaki). As a result, the names Imari and Arita wares were used interchangeably. In the West, Arita porcelain was known by several names, including Imari, Amari, Old Japan and Kakiemon (see Japan, §IX, 3, (iii)).

Porcelain production is said to have begun in Japan in 1616, when the Korean ceramicist Ri Sanpei [Jap. Kanagae Sanbei] (1579–1655), who had been brought to Japan after Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasions of Korea (...

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1749, in Osaka; died 1804.

Painter. Landscapes.

Nanga School.

Baigai was a man of letters and a member of the Nanga School (scholar painters) who grouped together at the end of the 18th century in Osaka. Like other artists of his generation, Baigai accepted the patronage of Masuyama Sessai, Lord of Ise. He was mainly a painter of landscapes but also published memoirs and reflections on art....

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1783, in Nagoya; died 1856.

Painter, draughtsman. Landscapes, birds, flowers.

Nanga School.

Baiitsu was a painter of the Nanga (literati) School. He spent his years of apprenticeship with the painter Chikuto (1776-1853), with whom he became close friends and together with whom he is today considered to be one of the best representatives of the Nanga School. He studied the Chinese ink painting techniques of the Ming and Qing. He arrived in Kyoto around ...

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1770, in Nagoya; died 27 January 1857.

Painter.

After studying the Chinese masters of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, Go Bautsu took lessons from Chikuto (1776-1853) whom he followed to Kyoto. He painted landscapes, flowers and the heads of animals....

Bazaar, which is rooted in Middle Persian wāzār and Armenian vačaṟ, has acquired three different meanings: the market as a whole, a market day, and the marketplace. The bazaar as a place is an assemblage of workshops and stores where various goods and services are offered.

Primitive forms of shops and trade centres existed in early civilizations in the Near East, such as Sialk, Tepe in Kashan, Çatal Hüyük, Jerico, and Susa. After the 4th millennium BC, the population grew and villages gradually joined together to shape new cities, resulting in trade even with the remote areas as well as the acceleration of the population in towns. The advancement of trade and accumulation of wealth necessitated the creation of trade centres. Trade, and consequently marketplaces, worked as the main driving force in connecting separate civilizations, while fostering a division of labour, the diffusion of technological innovations, methods of intercultural communication, political and economic management, and techniques of farming and industrial production....

Chinese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1732; died 1807.

Painter. Landscapes.

Bi Han was a landscape painter from Yanghu, Jiangsu province. He was a disciple of Yun Shouping.

New York, 26 Nov 1990: Landscape Album (ten leaves, of which eight are in ink on paper and two are in ink and colour on paper...

[I Ping-shouzi Zisihao Moqing]

(b Ninghua, Fujian Province, 1754; d Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, 1815).

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 pioneering figure in the stele studies (beixue) movement in calligraphy (see China: Calligraphy). He occasionally painted landscapes, few of which are extant. His writings on calligraphy can be found in his Collected Poems of the Lingering Spring Thatched Hall (Liuchun caotang shichao).

Yi shared contemporary antiquarian interest and owned a large collection of rubbings from ancient inscriptions. In calligraphy Yi is best known for his clerical script (lishu), a modern reinterpretation of the style of Han dynasty stone steles. He also developed distinctive style in running script (...

Japanese centre of ceramics production. High-fired ceramic wares were manufactured from the end of the 12th century in and around the village of Inbe, Bizen Province (now Okayama Prefect.). This region had been a centre for manufacturing Sue-style stonewares and Haji-style earthenwares from the 6th century ad (see Japan, §IX, 2, (ii), (a)). At the end of the Heian period (794–1185) the potters moved from the old Sue-ware sites around Osafune village to Inbe, just to the north. In response to increased agricultural development, the new kilns manufactured kitchen mortars (suribachi), narrow-necked jars (tsubo) and wide-necked jars (kame). During the 13th century the wares show less of the grey-black surfaces typical of the old Sue tradition and more of the purple-reddish colour characteristic of Bizen. In the 14th century Bizen-ware production sites shifted from the higher slopes to the foot of the mountains. Kilns expanded in capacity, ranging up to 40 m in length. Vast quantities of Bizen wares, particularly kitchen mortars, were exported via the Inland Sea to Kyushu, Shikoku and numerous points in western Honshu, establishing Bizen as the pre-eminent ceramics centre in western Japan. By the 15th century the Bizen repertory had expanded to include agricultural wares in graded sizes; wares then featured combed decoration and such functional additions as lugs and pouring spouts. Plastic–forming was assisted by the introduction of a fusible clay found 2–4 m under paddy-fields. This clay, which fires to an almost metallic hardness, is still in use today....

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Active in Nagoya.

Born 1736; died 1824.

Painter.

Ukiyo-e School.

Bokusen was a pupil of Utamaro and Hokusai.

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Active in Edo (now Tokyo).

Born 1752, in Edo (now Tokyo); died 1826.

Painter. Landscapes.

Bosai was a devotee of Confucius and belonged to the ink painting school.

New York, 23 Oct 1991: Mountain Lake (ink and diluted colour on silk...

[Kameda Chōkō; Kameda Hōsai]

(b Edo [now Tokyo], 1752; d Edo, 1826).

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 1765 to 1774 Bōsai trained under Inoue Kinga (1732–84), an influential Confucian scholar of eclectic doctrines as well as a painter and calligrapher, at the Seijūkan, a private academy near Yokohama. Bōsai opened a Confucian academy in Edo in 1774. In 1790, however, the Tokugawa shogunate issued an edict aimed at curtailing the popularity of such schools as Bōsai’s, where students were encouraged to develop their own moral philosophy rather than accept the government-sponsored Confucianism of the Chinese Song-period (ad 960–1279) philosopher Zhu Xi. Bōsai gradually lost his pupils and in 1797 closed his school.

Bōsai’s artistic activity increased from ...

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1763, in Edo (now Tokyo); died 1840.

Painter.

Nanga School.

With Buncho the Nanga (literati) School became established in Edo (present-day Tokyo) at the end of the 18th century. The son of a poet, he began to paint at a young age under the guidance of his master Matsudaira Sadanobu, who noticed his precocious talent. He studied the styles of several schools (Kano, Tosa, Nagasaki, Maruyama-Shijo), then Chinese works of the Ming and Qing dynasties, of which he made very careful copies. He went to great lengths to synthesise all these various elements, and developed a composite style also influenced by the rules of Western art. He illustrated books and painted various subjects (birds, flowers, animals, human figures), but he was at his best when painting landscapes; a series of his realist landscapes was of such scientific accuracy that it was used in the defence of the bay of Edo (present-day Tokyo). He was very well known during his lifetime and the only contemporary who was able to rival his versatility and prolificacy was Hokusai (...

[Tani Masayasu; Shazanrō]

(b Edo [now Tokyo], Oct 15, 1763; d Edo, Jan 6, 1841).

Japanese painter and book designer (see fig.). He was the son of the poet Tani Rokkoku (1729–1809). As his father and grandfather were retainers of the Tayasu family, descended from the eighth Tokugawa shogun, Bunchō inherited samurai status and received a small stipend to meet the responsibilities this entailed. In his youth he began studying the painting techniques of the Kanō school under Katō Bunrei (1706–82). After Bunrei’s death Bunchō worked with masters of other schools, such as the literati painter Kitayama Kangan (1767–1801), and developed a wide stylistic range that included many Chinese, Japanese, and even European idioms. He is best known for his crisp landscapes in the literati style (Nanga or Bunjinga; see Japan, §VI, 4, (vi), (d)), especially those produced in the Kansei era (1789–1801) inspired by such Chinese masters of the Ming period (...

Japanese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Active in Osaka.

Born 1735 or 1737; died 1810 or 1812.

Painter, print artist.

Chinese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Active at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th.

Painter.

Paris (Mus. National des Arts asiatiques-Guimet): Rocky Coast Bordered by Steep Slopes.;Album leaf, with a colophon by the artist (signed and dated 1821)

[cha Kyŏngdoho Haksan, Ch’anha]

(b P’ap’yŏng, Kyŏnggi Province, 1764; d after 1840).

Korean painter and scholar. He began his official career brilliantly in 1792 by coming first in the saengwŏn (classics licentiate) examination. Unfortunately his advancement was interrupted twice, first when he was banished to Ch’angwon, South Kyŏngsang Province, in 1806 for political factionalism, the second time when he was released from his post of magistrate because of charges brought against him in 1830 by the amhaeng ŏsa (‘secret inspectors’).

Yun Che-hong’s contemporary Sin Wi, who wrote extensively about painters and their works, only mentions briefly that Yun preferred to paint landscapes. This suggests that, as a result of his turbulent official career, Yun might not have mingled with men of letters and arts of his time. Yun Che-hong’s extant works prove that he was an innovative and unconventional painter. An album of eight leaves containing Yun’s landscape paintings (Seoul, Ho-am A. Mus.) reveals that he experimented with such unusual techniques as using the tip of his finger or a stick. On one of the album leaves—that depicting ...

Chinese, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1768, in Hangzhou (Zhejiang); died 1822.

Painter. Landscapes, flowers.

Chen Hongshou painted mainly bamboo.

New York, 6 Dec 1989: Chrysanthemums and Banana Leaves (ink and colour on paper, hanging scroll, 51 × 12¼ ins/129.5 × 31 cm) USD 4,400...