Akamatsu Rinsaku

BIOGRAPHY

Sources: Wikipedia France https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinsaku_Akamatsu; Wikipedia Japan https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%B5%A4%E6%9D%BE%E9%BA%9F%E4%BD%9C and as footnoted.

Akamatsu Rinsaku was born the youngest of four siblings,  with two older brothers and one older sister, in the present-day 3rd district of Honmachi, Tsuyama City, Okayama Prefecture. In 1883, the family moved to Osaka. Despite his father's various attempts at different professions, such as zinc oxide and paint manufacturing, none were successful. Eventually, his father started a signboard business where Rinsaku would work as a boy.

After graduating from elementary school, Akamatsu would meet Yamanouchi Gusen 山内愚僊 (1866-1927), an early Osaka-based Western-style painter, and become his apprentice. Three years later in 1897, Rinsaku gained entry to the Western Painting Department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tokyo Bijutsu Gakkō) where he studied with Kuroda Seiki 黒田清輝 (1866-1924), "the father of Western-style painting" and leader of the Hakubakai (White Horse Society).[1] Graduating in 1900, be would take a position as an art teacher in Tsue City, Mie Prefecture the beginning of a life in teaching, as well as creating, art. In 1901 at the 6th Hakubakai Exhibition his painting "Night Train" (shown above) would win the Hakubakai Award, receiving high acclaim. 

In 1904, he started working for the Asahi Shimbun 朝日新聞 in Osaka as an illustrator. He would continue working for the paper until he resigned in 1915 as photographic technology was reducing the demand for illustrators.

In 1916, along with four fellow illustrators at the paper, the artists Noda Kyūho 野田九浦 (1879-1971), Mizushima Nihofu  水島爾保布 (1884-1958), Nagai Hyosai 永井瓢斎 (1882-1945) and Hata Tsuneharu 幡恒春 (1883-?), he would work with the well-known Osaka publisher and pioneer in the "sketch-tour" genre, Kanao Tanejirō 金尾種次郎 (1879-1947), owner of the Kanao Bun'endō 金尾文淵堂 publishing house, to create the thirty print series in the form of a folding travel album, "Hanshin meisho zue" (Pictures of Celebrated Places in Osaka and Kobe). (See image below.) Each artist would contribute six designs to the series. The prints are considered by some among the earliest examples of shin hanga landscapes.[2]

After leaving the newspaper, Akamatsu soon returned to teaching at various schools in the Osaka region. He would open the Akamatsu Western Painting Research Institute in 1926 in Osaka's Tampei House, a "hub of Osaka modernist culture" and in 1934, he became a professor at the Kansai Women's School of Fine Arts, overseeing the Western Painting Department, assuming the role of principal in 1937.[3] 

Focusing his artistic efforts on his painting and the promotion of Western-style painting, in 1918 he would join the Kōfukai 光風会 (Light and Wind Association), made up of Western-style painters and later serve as secretary for the Osaka Arts Association.[4]

During WWII, many of Akamatsu's works were lost as allied bombing intensified in the Osaka area, destroying his home, studio and the Tampei House in which his school was housed.[5][6] 

Following the war in 1946, the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art-affiliated Art Research Institute was established with Akamatsu assuming the position of practical instruction professor. In 1948, he was awarded the equivalent of what is now known as the Osaka Cultural Award.  

As part of the effort to revitalize the Japanese print tradition after the war, Akamatsu would again work with his friend the publisher Kanao Tanejirō in 1947 to produce the thirty-six print woodblock portfolio "Thirty-Six Views of Osaka" (大阪三十六景), considered his major work designing woodblock prints. (Click on this collection's print below for more information on this portfolio.) In 1949, Akamatsu, at his own volition, would create "a series of scrolls depicting Natsume Soseki’s novels Grass Pillow, Gubijinso, I am a Cat, and Botchan" a section of which is shown below.[7]

On November 24, 1953, Rinsaku Akamatsu passed away at his residence in Tennoji Ward, Osaka.

2022 EXHIBITION

Sample Signature and Seal of the Artist (as used on his woodblock prints)

Prints in Collection

click on thumbnail for print details