After Toyohara Chikanobu (1838-1912) Japanese, Large Signed Watercolor on Paper. Depicts "Lessons from the History of Japan," specifically the Samurai Shiragi Saburo and Tokiaki playing musical instruments on a mountainside. Signed bottom right. Original image printed in 1897. 

Overall: 32 5/8 X 23 5/8 in. 

Sight: 31 1/2 X 22 1/2 in. 

#3843 . 

Toyohara Chikanobu was born Hashimoto Naoyoshi in 1838 in Japan. Little is known of his childhood, with the earliest information coming from his military career. He was a retainer of the Sakakibara clan of Takada Domain in Echigo Province. After the collapse of the Tokugawa Shogunate, he joined the Shōgitai and fought in the Battle of Ueno in 1868. Escaping from the Satsuma forces in the aftermath, he joined Tokugawa loyalists in Hakodate, Hokkaidō, where he fought in the Battle of Hakodate at the Goryōkaku star fort. He served under the leadership of Enomoto Takeaki and Ōtori Keisuke, achieving a measure of fame for his bravery. However, following the Shōgitai’s surrender, he was remanded along with others to the authorities in the Takada domain. In 1875, humiliated and without income, he traveled to Tokyo and begged for work from an artist named Kaishin Shimbun. Shimbun gave him menial labor at first until discovering him creating intricate nishiki-e (brocade) woodblocks in his spare time. Hashimoto confided to Shimbun that he had studied the Kanō school of painting in his youth, but was punished for drawing ukiyo-e and had abandoned his studies. Shimbun helped him acquire resources and sent him to study under a disciple of Keisai Eisen, who in turn sent him to join the school of Ichiyūsai Kuniyoshi. It was around this time that he abandoned his birth name (as many former samurai and warriors did at the beginning of the Meiji era), and began to sign his work as “Yoshitsuru.” After Kuniyoshi’s death, he studied with Kunisada, and referred to himself as “Yōshū.” Considered one of the most prolific artists of the Meiji period, he most commonly signed his name as “Yōshū Chikanobu,” and his works ranged from Japanese mythology to kabuki actors to women’s fashions. He is most famous for his realistic battlefield portrayals, offering a first-hand view of the carnage he had witnessed, and which have been invaluable to researchers of the time period. Chikanobu was also known as a master of bijinga, and for incorporating both traditional and Western clothing and styles into his images. He became withdrawn in his later years as samurai were conversely shunned and idolized more and more as the government shifted to a militant regime, and died quietly in Tokyo in 1912.