梅原龍三郎

Umehara Ryūzaburō was born in Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, on March 9, 1888. His father, who ran a kimono business (shikkai-ya) under the house name of Uji-ya, apparently had eight or nine children by his first wife, although only two of the painter’s siblings, a brother and a sister, survived childhood. When Ryūzaburō was three, his father remarried, and the children were raised with care by their stepmother Yuki. Actually, during his early years, he went by the name “Ryōzaburō,” and would not revert to the original form, Ryūzaburō, until he was 26. Having completed his ordinary and higher elementary education, he entered Kyoto Prefectural Second Middle School, although, so intense was his desire to become a painter, he dropped out before finishing. He attended the Shōbikai private school of Itō Yoshihiko and studied at the Shōgoin Yōga Kenkyūjo (Shōgo Institute of Western Art), under its founder Asai Chū, and the Kansai Bijutsuin (Kansai Art Institute) that evolved from it. In 1907, at the Sixth Kansai Bijutsukai Kyōgikai (Kansai Art Society Competition), his ink wash painting won the top prize and an oil painting earned an honorable mention. In 1908, he traveled to France with Tanaka Kisaku, who had studied with him at the Kansai Bijutsuin, and attended the Académie Julian in Paris. Deeply impressed by the works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, he visited the artist in Cagnes-sur-Mer in southern France the following year. On Renoir’s recommendation, he entered the Académie Ranson. After traveling to Spain, Italy, and elsewhere, he revisited Renoir before leaving for Japan. He arrived back in Kyoto in June 1913 and went to Tokyo in September. The following month, Shirakaba-sha organized the large-scale, solo showing “Umehara Ryōzaburō Oil Painting Exhibition.” In 1914, Umehara helped to establish the Nika Association, accepting the nomination as supervisory commissioner, and started to participate in its exhibitions. That same year, he married Tsuyako, the sister of the Yōga (Western-style) painter Kameoka Takashi. Their daughter Akara was born in August 1915. In 1918, he reverted to using his real name, Ryūzaburō, and left the Nika Association. His son Narushi was born in January 1919, and the year after that he traveled again to France. Returning to Japan in September 1921, he took a house in Zaimokuza, Kamakura. Around this time, he was frequently in the company of the Shirakaba School novelist Nagayo Yoshirō and also associated with the painter Kishida Ryūsei. The following year, with Kosugi Misei (Hōan) and others, he formed the Yōga society Shun-yo-kai, although after Kishida withdrew in 1925 due to a dispute among artists attending the Third Shun-yo-kai Nagoya Exhibition, Umehara, who had been his original sponsor, also left. That July, he, Kawashima Riichirō, and various others were invited to join the new Yōga branch of the Kokuga Sōsaku Kyōkai (Association for the Creation of National Painting, later reorganized as the Kokugakai). The organization, founded by Tsuchida Bakusen and others, had previously been exclusive to Nihonga (Japanese-style) painters. In 1926, the first book devoted to his works, “Umehara Ryūzaburō: Jisen Yugashū [Self-selected oil paintings]” (Tokyo: Atorie-sha), was published. In April 1929, Umehara attended the Chinese Republic’s First National Art Exhibition in Shanghai, where his and the oil paintings of many other Japanese artists were displayed. He later went to West Lake in Hangzhou City and produced a number of works there. Back in Japan, he rented a villa in 1931 from Nojima Hiromasa (who later became a collector of his works) in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, which thereafter served as his summer base. He actively engaged in painting female nudes around this time. “Chikusō Rafu” 竹窓裸婦 (Nude by the Window) (1935, Ohara Museum of Art, Kurashiki) and another work featuring similarly buxom figures, “Rafu Ōgi” 裸婦扇 (Nude and Fans) (1937, Ohara Museum of Art), are considered preeminent examples. When Gotō Shintarō of the publishing house Zauhō Kankōkai established the art society Seikōkai (Seikō Society) in April 1933, he participated along with other painters such as Yasui Sōtarō and Sakamoto Hanjirō. That October, Umehara traveled for the first time to Taiwan, where he associated with Fujishima Takeji. In January of the following year, he went to Kagoshima in Kyushu and painted the scenery around Sakurajima volcano. In 1935, he became a member of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts (reorganized as the Japan Art Academy in 1947). In December of that year, “Exhibition of New Works by Fujishima Takeji, Yasui Sōtarō, and Umehara Ryūzaburō” was held in Osaka and at the Shiseido Gallery in Tokyo’s Ginza district. In July 1936, an exhibition of print works by Umehara and Yasui was held at the publishing house Bijutsu Shinron-sha in Osaka. In July 1939, he went to Manchuria to serve on the jury of the Manchuria Fine Arts Exhibition (Manten) and afterward flew from Dalian to Peking (Beijing), where views of the city impressed him. He became a frequent visitor to Peking between then until 1942, producing a series of landscapes, including “Unchū Tendan” 雲中天壇 (Tiantan in the Clouds ) (1939, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto), as well as works portraying female Chinese, including “Kūnyan to Chūrippu” 姑娘とチューリップ (Chinese Girl and Tulip) (1942, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). After returning to Japan, he created many paintings of roses arranged in “wucai” porcelain jars he had acquired in Peking. In June 1944, he and Yasui Sōtarō were appointed professors in the Western-style painting department of the Tokyo Fine Arts School (later reorganized as the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music [today’s Tokyo University of the Arts]) and, the following month, were both nominated as Imperial Artists. Umehara moved to Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture in the autumn to live alone and devote himself to his work. In March 1946, he exhibited at and also served as a juror for the Ministry of Education’s first Nitten (Japan Fine Arts Exhibition) held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. A month later, at the 20th Kokugakai Exhibition (Kokuten), Japan’s first postwar open-entry exhibition, a special room was set aside for 41 of his works to commemorate his two-decade-long association with the event (the catalogue published by Fugaku Honsha appeared the following year). From that summer through into the autumn, he stayed and worked in Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture. In 1947, he announced he would not participate in either the Kokuten or the Nitten of that year. He, Kosugi Hōan, Suda Kunitarō, and Yasui Sōtarō, asked to be excused from the jury of the second department (oil painting) of the Fourth Nitten in the following year, although the request was declined. A book of drawings, “Umehara Ryūzaburō sobyōshū” (1948), published by Ishihara Kyūryūdō, made its appearance. When Tanfūkai, an exhibition association organized at the Takashimaya department store gallery in Tokyo, was formed in 1949, he, Nakagawa Kazumasa, and Itō Ren were among the original members. Umehara spent the summer of 1950 in Yagasaki, Karuizawa, where he painted Mt. Asama, and in November, he moved his residence to Ichigaya-Kagachō, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. The following year, he stepped down from the leadership of the Kokugakai and became an honorary member, subsequently withdrawing entirely from management activities. During the summer and autumn of 1951, he stayed and worked in Ōhito, Shizuoka Prefecture. In March 1952, he and Yasui Sōtarō resigned their professorships at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. Each was awarded the Order of Culture on November 3. To commemorate the artists’ elevation, a two-person exhibition was held the following May at the Homma Museum of Art in Sakata, Yamagata Prefecture. In the autumn of 1953, a new studio designed for him by Yoshida Isoya was built at Umehara’s residence. A separate studio was established in Karuizawa, and henceforth he would work there from summer to autumn almost every year. The film “Umehara Ryūzaburō” (directed and photographed by Takaba Takashi and produced by Bridgestone Museum of Art) was completed as part of the “Art Film Series” in 1953. In April 1956, he exhibited five works at the 30th Kokuten, where his technique of squeezing paint directly from the tube onto the canvas became a hot topic of discussion. In June, he and his wife Tsuyako traveled to Italy to work on projects. In January 1957, Umehara was awarded the 27th Asahi Culture Prize. The following June, he resigned from the Japan Art Academy to work on an independent basis. In the same month, his son Narushi died. That year “Umehara Ryūzaburō: Futsui kinsaku gashū [Recent French and Italian works]” was published by the Asahi Shimbun Company. In May 1958, he went to Europe with his daughter Shimada Akara and was later joined by his wife for visits to Italy and southern France, including Cannes. From now through into the following decade, Umehara painted using distemper (mineral pigments). Works of his incorporating gorgeous picture planes, created using “kindei” (gold paint), are reminiscent of the Rinpa School of Japanese art. Also in 1958, “Umehara Ryūzaburō daiichibu [part one] 1905–1924” was published by Kyūryūdō. In March 1960, when the Takashimaya department store organized the Kōjitsukai exhibition association in Osaka, the artist became a member along with Hayashi Takeshi, Chōkai Seiji, and Nakagawa Kazumasa. An exhibition organized by the Yomiuri Shimbun, “Umehara Ryūzaburō Gagyō 50 Nen Kinen Ten” (Exhibition Commemorating a 50-Year Painting Career), was held in April at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (now Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art) and at the Takashimaya store in Tokyo’s Nihonbashi a month later—the point at which he also donated works to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and the National Museum of Modern Art. That year, “Umehara Ryūzaburō jisengashū [self-selected works]” was published by the Yomiuri Shimbun. In 1961, he revisited France with his daughter and later traveled again to Cannes with his wife to work. He frequently went to Italy and France in the 1960s and, around 1968, began creating clay sculptures of nudes and other subjects. In March 1973, the French government made him a Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contributions to Franco-Japanese exchange. He attended a ceremony at the French Embassy in Tokyo to receive the award. In his later years, Umehara continued energetically painting roses and peonies, among other subjects. Many solo exhibitions were held, including at Galerie Tamenaga and Galerie Yoshii in Tokyo, the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, the Umeda Museum of Modern Art (now closed), and department store galleries. In December 1985, experiencing breathing difficulties due to throat congestion, he was admitted to Keio University Hospital. He died there on January 16 of acute pneumonia. Distinguished by their splendid colors and bold and decorative brushstrokes, highly original products of a long career, his works have earned acclaim as exemplars of “Japanese-style Yōga.” (Yamano Hidetsugu / Translated by Ota So & Walter Hamilton) (Published online: 2024-03-06)