Tachibana Morikuni (橘守国) (artist 1679 – 1748)
Narahara (original family name - 楢原)Yūzei (family name - 橘有税)
Sōbei (nickname - 惣兵衛)
Kōsoken (go - 後素軒)
Chikara (personal name)
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Biography:
A notable Japanese artist of the Kano school; studied with Tsuruzawa Tanzan, who was a pupil of Kano Tan'Yu. Examples of his work can be found in the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), the Musees Royaŭ d'Art et d'Histoire (Brussels), the Rhode Island School of Design, the Rietberg Museum (Zurich), the Staatliche Museen (Berlin), the Victoria & Albert Museum, etc.
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Laurence P. Roberts wrote in A Dictionary of Japanese Artists... on page 112: "Kanō painter, illustrator. Also an able writer, leaving quite a few published books. Born in Ōsaka. Studied under Tsuruzawa Tanzan, a pupil of Kanō Tan'yū. As a pupil of Tanzan's, copied many sample pictures fo the Kanō school and then printed and published them in the form of a small book. Kanō family enraged, forced Tanzan to disown him. An artist of great versatility with a particular talent for miniatures."
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"Tachibana Morikuni (1670-1748) was an artist of Ōsaka. His family name was Naramura, and his personal names were Sōbei and Chikara. He used two artists names Yūzeishi and Kōsoken, beside Morikuni. He received his training as a painter under Tsuruzawa Tanzan, a pupil of Kano-Tanyū, but developed his own style but worked on book illustration."
"Morokoshi Kinmō Zu-i [Illustrated Encyclopedia on China], probably, is his first important work, and shows his characteristic style, which is minute detail drawing. He worked in broader technique, as shown in Unpitsu Sogwa, but it seems clear that he was best in detail work."
"Morikuni was succeeded by his son Yasukuni who received the title of Hōgen as a painter."
Quoted from: Descriptive Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Illustrated Books in the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago by Kenji Toda, page 317, 1931.
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Jack Hillier wrote in The Art of the Japanese Book, volume one, Sotheby's Publications, 1987, page 189: "Tachibana Morikuni (1679-1748), in the direct line from Tanyū (who taught Tanzan, Morikuni's master), was the most prolific book-illustrator working in the Kanō tradition in the early 18th century. He, his pupils, and others of similar artistic background can be seen as the counterbalance to those artists of the Kamagata and of Edo who purveyed pictures of the new hedonistic life-style of the better off commoners and who tended to burlesque the legendary, historical and literary idols of the establishment. Picture-books by Morikuni... are moral and Confucian in tone in comparison to Sukenobu's... and their drawing style is correspondingly conservative and restrained. Yet Morikuni was obliged to some extent to modify his Kanō technique to meet the demands of book illustration, and there is a factual liveliness in his approach that sometimes gives us more pleasure in his prints than we have in many of the Kanō brush paintings of the period. In fact, Morikuni himself is not known by paintings (do any originals exist? none, to my knowledge, has ever been reproduced), and it may be that his dedication to books is merely a sign of his independence: he may even have lost caste by devoting himself to printed works rather than to the more prestige-buildling paintings."