Sumiyoshi Gukei

▪ Japanese painter

original name Sumiyoshi Hirozumi

born 1631, Kyōto, Japan

died April 25, 1705, Edo [now Tokyo]

      Japanese painter of the early Tokugawa period (1603–1867) who became the first official painter of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate.

      Gukei came from the Yamato-e (painting based on Japanese subjects and techniques) background, as against the Kara-e (painting strongly influenced by Chinese art) background. His father, Jokei (1599–1670), of the Tosa family of Yamato-e painters, had assumed the name Sumiyoshi in 1662, but it was Gukei who established the Sumiyoshi school of painting and contributed to the spread of Yamato-e in Edo (now Tokyo), as the Tosa school painters had done in Kyōto. His scroll “Scenes of Kyōto and Its Environs” (Tokyo National Museum) is remarkable for its vividness of style and the way the daily life of courtiers and townsmen, as well as of country folks, is depicted with a powerful sense of reality and humour. These qualities were exceptional among the Yamato-e painters of the time.

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