Tamashin Art Museum / Murata Tanryo : A Yamato-e Painter Who Depicted Changing Times
This exhibition is the first full-scale exhibition to be devoted to Murata Tanryo (1872–1940). Apprenticed to Kawabe Mitate, a leading producer of musha-e (a genre depicting warriors and samurai from Japanese history and mythology), Tanryo won awards at various exhibitions from his teens onward. In 1891, he founded the Japan Young Painters’ Association. But records of his participation in major exhibitions abruptly cease after 1907, with his submission to the first Bunten exhibition. Tanryo moved to the village of Sunagawa in the western suburbs of Tokyo. He deliberately distanced himself from the center of the artistic world, forsaking fame, living a simple life, and allowing his brush to wend in whatever direction his fancy took him. As a result of this premature withdrawal from the public eye while still in his mid-thirties, Tanryo’s name has long been overlooked in the history of Japanese art. Few are aware that the painting Taisei Hokan (Restoration of Imperial Rule) (housed in the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery of Meiji-jingu Gaien) was painted in a painter’s studio located in the village of Sunagawa. This exhibition presents a large number of works spanning the career of a single painter, Tanryo, showing his many artistic endeavors, centering on historical paintings, through the changing times of the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras.
Gallery Talk (with English translater)
2/11(Sun.)14:30-(about 30 minutes)
3/9(Sat.)14:30-(about 30 minutes)
