The Heron Maiden (Sagi Musume)

Provenance

The Japanese Print Shop, Liberty London.

Private Collection, and thence by descent.

Notes

Published by Nezu Seitaro.

Kitano Tsunetomi was born 1880 in Kanazawa. He moved to Osaka as a young man where he would establish himself as a leading master of bijin-ga (meaning pictures of beautiful women), a genre of Japanese art that focuses on idealised representations of female beauty which became particularly prominent during the Edo period (1603–1868), and in his own lifetime, earn recognition as the first Nihonga artist from Osaka.

Tsunetomi began his career in 1892 as an apprentice in woodblock printing workshops in Kanazawa. In 1897, he worked for the carver Nakayama Komataro before moving to Osaka in 1898 to study under the painter and print designer Inano Toshitsune. The following year, he began contributing illustrations to the monthly publication Shin-Nihon.

Initially working as a newspaper illustrator, Tsunetomi developed a distinctive style influenced by ukiyo-e and the emerging Nihonga tradition. His elegant and often psychologically charged depictions of women, particularly those associated with Osaka’s entertainment districts, became his hallmark.

He exhibited at the government-sponsored Bunten exhibitions from 1910 and received national recognition in 1911. In 1917, he became a member of the Japan Art Institute. Through his paintings and teaching, Tsunetomi helped establish Osaka as an important centre for modern Japanese painting and remains celebrated as one of the foremost bijin-ga artists of the Taishō and early Shōwa periods.