Kitano Tsunetomi
Japanese, 1880 - 1947
Person TypeIndividual
Terms
Japanese, 1871 - 1945
BiographyBorn in Kanazawa. Real name Tomitaro. Initially Tsunetomi became an apprentice with a master woodblock carver and afterwards worked as a block carver for the newspaper Hokkoku shimpo. He moved to Osaka to study nihonga under Ineno Toshitsune, who was a student of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. From 1901 Tsunetomi worked as an illustrator at the newspaper Osaka Shinbun. His painting ‘Hideriame’ (‘Rain during sunshine’), was highly acclaimed as a new style of bijinga and he was awarded a prize at the fifth Bunten. In 1924 he founded Hakuyodo, a school and publishing house. In 1926 his most important work ‘Sagimusume [the heron maiden]’ was published. His students included Kitani Chigusa and Shima Seien. (The Female Image: 20th Century Prints of Japanese Beauties. Hotei Publishing, 2000).