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【国宝】渡辺崋山筆「鷹見泉石像」(江戸時代) / ColBase(東京国立博物館蔵)

Portraits

Paintings of particular individuals, either of just the face or the entire figure

     A portrait is a painting of a particular individual, whether of just the face or that person's entire figure. A portrait that an artist paints of himself is a self-portrait. In Japan, up until the middle of the Heian period (794-1180), there were few portraits of actual individuals except for historical portraits of Buddhist priests of outstanding virtue or mythological individuals. From the late Heian period to the early Kamakura period (1180-1333), realistic Japanese paintings called nise-e (likenesses) were increasingly painted of military men, Buddhist priests, and emperors. Portraiture thus gradually took hold in Japan. In the mid-Kamakura period, portraits of Zen priests called chinso (assuming- responsibility images) were brought from China to Japan. These were self-portraits that teacher-priests inscribed and gave to their disciples signifying transmitting of the Buddhist law, or dharma. These images of teacher-priests had considerable influence on Japanese portraiture. In the Edo period (1603-1867), the classes of subjects of portraiture expanded, and ukiyo-e artists drew portraits that reached large bodies of consumers by means of woodblock printing technology. In the Meiji era (1868-1912), artists coming under Western artistic influence started painting portraits using oil pigments.

       When we turn our attention to Western countries, we find that already in ancient Greece and Rome artists were producing realistic portraits. We have no portrait paintings from ancient Greece, and there are only a few portrait paintings from the age of ancient imperial Rome, such as portraits on the walls of Pompeian residences and portraits of mummified individuals in Egypt. But later, with the spread of Christianity in Europe, Christian perspectives came to dominate European societies, and artists stopped painting portraits of secular individuals. It was only with the coming of the Renaissance in fourteenth-century Europe that artists began again to paint portraits. The fashion for portraits began in the Netherlands, which in those days had a flourishing art scene, and spread to Italy, France, and other European countries. From the sixteenth century on, portraiture, as a distinct genre in the field of painting, developed by leaps and bounds, and subjects of portraits became increasingly diverse. In the nineteenth century, the coming of photography deprived portraiture of its traditional purpose of recording the appearance of an individual, and so artists began to paint portraits as a motif, seeking to paint individuals as a means of artistic expression. Portraiture thus became artistically transformed.

Related People, Things and Events

Books

Related Works

Japanese portraits (Kamakura period (1185-1333))

Japanese portraits (Nanboku-cho, Muromachi, and Azuchi-Momoyama periods (1337-1603)) 

Japanese portraits (Edo period (1603-1868))

Japanese portraits (modern period (1868-present))

Overseas portraits (15th-16th c.)

Overseas portraits (17th-18th c.)

Overseas portraits (19th c.)

Overseas portraits (20th-21st c.)

Past Exhibitions

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Institutions Holding Related Materials

  • The National Diet Library (NDL), founded in 1948, is the library which belongs to the Diet. The NDL assists the activities of the National Diet. The Library collects and conserves materials and information both from Japan and abroad, serving as a foundation of knowledge and culture and providing library services to administrative and judicial entities and Japanese citizens.

  • As Japan’s representative museum, Tokyo National Museum collects, preserves, displays, and researches the cultural properties of Asia with a focus on Japan, and also provides educational programs.

  • Kyoto National Museum collects, preserves, displays, researches and provides educational programs focusing on cultural properties from Heian- through to Edo- period Japan, when the capital was located there.

  • The Pola Museum of Art opened in September 2002 in Sengokuhara, Hakone, amid the abundant nature of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, with the concept of “symbiosis between Hakone’s natural beauty and works of art.” The Pola Museum of Art’s diverse collection contains around 10,000 items, including Western painting, modern Japanese Western-style painting, contemporary nihonga (Japanese-style painting), prints, sculpture, Oriental ceramics, modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics, glasswork, and cosmetic utensils.

  • The Tokyo Fuji Art Museum is founded on November 3, 1983, in Hachioji, a thriving university town in the western suburbs of the Japanese capital. Priding itself as “a museum creating bridges around the world” to facilitate the exchange of different cultures, our museum has forged cordial relations with art museums and cultural institutes in 32 countries and territories to date. We do so by bringing the world’s finest works of art to Japan while reciprocating in kind by introducing the finest Japanese treasures to the world through special exhibitions that showcase their beauty and wonder through a unique new set of prisms and perspectives. Our museum possesses some 30,000 pieces of artworks from various periods and cultures including Japanese, Eastern and Western works, ranging from paintings, prints, photography, sculptures, ceramics and lacquer ware to armor, swords and medallions. Especially noteworthy is its outstanding collection of Western oil paintings that spans a five-hundred-year period from the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Romanticism to Impressionism and contemporary art, as well as its exceptional collection of photographic masterpieces that can give an overview of the history of photography from the birth of the photograph to the present age.

  • フランス政府から寄贈返還された松方コレクション(印象派の絵画およびロダンの彫刻を中心とするフランス美術コレクション)を基礎に、西洋美術に関する作品を広く公衆の観覧に供する機関として、1959(昭和34)年4月に発足。幅広い時代の西洋の肖像画を収蔵し、企画展にあわせて展示している。

External Links

  • 日本人の肖像(肖像画・肖像写真など)について調査可能なウェブサイトや書籍を紹介。

  • 外国人の肖像(肖像画・肖像写真など)について調査可能なウェブサイトや書籍を紹介。

  • 中国人の肖像(肖像画・肖像写真など)について調査可能なウェブサイトや書籍を紹介。

References

  1. 日立デジタル平凡社,平凡社
  2. 宮島新一 著,吉川弘文館
  3. 木村泰司 著,光文社
  4. 青柳正規, 木島俊介, 中野京子 監修,集英社