When speaking of modern Japanese-style painting, the names Taikan
YOKOYAMA and Seiho TAKEUCHI always arise. These two painters introduced
European painting styles into traditional Japanese painting and harmonized
them. Seiho was born in Kyoto in 1864. As a child, he loved to draw and
wanted to become a painter. He developed his own style by adopting
techniques from Western painting and blending them with the traditional
styles of the Maruyama-Shijo school. His reputation grew not only through
recognition of his greatness as a painter from his youth but also because of
the effort and enthusiasm he put into teaching the younger painters he met
at the Kyoto Municipal College of Painting, where he was a professor, and at
Chikujokai, his own private school. After Seiho received the first Order of
Cultural Merit in 1937, a number of his pupils went on to receive the same
Order.
