Art Appreciation: Uemura Shōen

Let's just appreciate art by Uemura Shōen (1875-1949).

Preparing for Dance c. 1914 by Uemura Shōen

Firefly c. 1913 by Uemura Shōen

You can learn more about who Uemura Shōen was here.

Large Snowflakes c.1913 by Uemura Shōen

Daughter Miyuki c. 1914 by Uemura Shōen

You can read a brief bio of Uemura Shōen on the Bow Down instagram here.

Spring Fragrance c. 1940 by Uemura Shōen 

Catching Fireflies c. 1932 by Uemura Shōen

In 1948, she became the first woman ever to be awarded Japan's Order of Culture.

For Consideration 

I would like to note in preparing this extremely brief post on Uemura Shōen that I was troubled by the disparity of information on this artist vs. the previous artist in this series, Gwendolyn Knight.

Uemura Shōen lived and died a lot less recently than Gwendolyn Knight--Knight passed in just 2005, and Shōen in 1949.

As such, I would have expected Knight's work much easier to find and track than Shōen's work.

I am sorry to report this turned out to be false--in trying to prepare the post on Knight's work, I struggled to find painting dates, clear and proper work attributions, and quality uploads of Knight's work. I didn't face any such challenges with Shōen whatsoever.

It is possible that this disparity can be explained by the artist's differing levels of celebrity and fame (i.e., Shōen's work might be more popular than Knight's work), or the fact that these women were not peers (i.e. they were active in entirely different parts of the world, art styles, and art movements). The more likely explanation, in my opinion, is that of racism. Knight was a black African-American woman, Shōen was an Asian woman living and working in Japan.

I think the racism and colourism present here can be further emphasized by reminding readers that Shōen was active during years where, generally speaking, she would have felt the ire of North American prejudice, being Japanese (recall that people of Japanese descent and Japanese citizens were extremely unpopular and experienced much discrimination during WW2 in North America). Despite this, Shōen's legacy has been preserved to a degree that I'm just not seeing with Knight's work, which is troubling indeed.