Iwasa Matabei

Self-portrait, unusually early for Japanese art, said to have been painted as he was dying in 1650. Important Cultural Property.
In this Japanese name, the surname is Iwasa.

Iwasa Matabei (Japanese: 岩佐 又兵衛, romanized: Iwasa Matabē; original name Araki Katsumochi [1] 1578 – July 20, 1650) was a Japanese artist of the early Tokugawa period,[2] who specialized in genre scenes of historical events and illustrations of classical Japanese and Chinese literature, as well as portraits. He was the son of Araki Murashige, a prominent daimyō of the Sengoku period who had been made to commit suicide, leaving Matabei to be raised with his mother's family name, Iwasa.[3][4]

Matabei's work was noted for its distinctive figures, with large heads and delicately drawn features, and he was effective both in colour and monochrome ink-wash painting, using an individual brush technique combining Tosa and Kanō elements.[5] Although trained by Kanō Naizen of the Kanō school, he was more influenced by the traditions of the Tosa school, and signed a late series of portraits of the Thirty-six Poetry Immortals (1640) commissioned by the shōgun Tokugawa Iemitsu for a temple as "the artist Matabei of the later current from Tosa Mitsunobu".[6]

The works of Matabei have an affinity with the early paintings of ukiyo-e, but there is a disagreement among scholars as to whether they are ukiyo-e themselves or not.[7] In Japan, it is common to regard Matabei as the originator of ukiyo-e.[8][9][10] On the other hand, there is a theory that Matabei is not the source of ukiyo-e, but rather an independent painter of the Tosa school, because his patrons were from high social classes. According to this theory, he is misunderstood as the source of ukiyo-e only because he is confused with the ukiyo-e painter of the same name (Ōtsu no Matabei) who appears in Chikamatsu's plays.[11]

His son Katsushige (d. 1673) was also a painter, known for dancing figures in a style like that of his father.[12]

  1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, "Iwasa Matabei"
  2. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, "Iwasa Matabei"
  3. ^ Paine, 249–250
  4. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, "Iwasa Matabei"
  5. ^ Paine, 250
  6. ^ Paine, 250
  7. ^ Kita, Sandy (1999). The Last Tosa: Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei, Bridge to Ukiyo-e. University of Hawaii Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-8248-1826-5.
  8. ^ Kita, Sandy (2011). "Japanese Prints". In Nietupski, Paul Kocot; O'Mara, Joan (eds.). Reading Asian Art and Artifacts: Windows to Asia on American College Campuses. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 149, 154–155. ISBN 978-1-61146-070-4.
  9. ^ 岩佐又兵衛 (in Japanese). Kotobank. Archived from the original on 5 May 2022. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
  10. ^ 伝説の浮世絵開祖 岩佐又兵衛 (in Japanese). Chiba City Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 9 February 2023. Retrieved 12 June 2023.
  11. ^ Paine, 247–250
  12. ^ Paine, 250