Maruyama Ōkyo

A personal style of Western naturalism mixed with Eastern decorative design emerged, and Ōkyo founded the Maruyama school of painting.

Although many of his fellow artists criticized his work as too slavishly devoted to natural representation, it proved a success with laypeople.

He first studied under Ishida Yūtei, a member of the Kanō school and ultimately a bigger influence on Ōkyo than the stereoscope images.

Ōkyo tried to find models for the people depicted in them, even for the shocking images such as a man being ripped in two by frightened bulls.

They found it to be overly concerned with physical appearances, alleging that he was too beholden to the real world and produced undignified works.

Noteworthy pupils include Ōkyo's son, Maruyama Ōzui, Nagasawa Rosetsu, and Matsumura Goshun.

Later that year, Kyoto suffered a devastating fire, so Ōkyo and Goshun moved into a temple called Kiunin.

[13] His realism differed from previous Japanese schools in its devotion to nature as the ultimate source with no regard for sentiment.

Ōkyo's intricately detailed plant and animal sketches show a great influence from European nature drawings.

An album of leaves in the Nishimura Collection in Kyoto (now in handscroll form) depicts several animals and plants, each labeled as if in European guidebook.

Moreover, he follows the Eastern tradition in depicting objects with very little setting; often his pictures feature a single subject on a plain background.

[15] Nature was not his only subject; many works by Ōkyo depict normal scenes from life in Kyoto's commercial area.

[3] Later in his oeuvre, Pine Trees in Snow, executed in 1773 for the wealthy Mitsui family, is realistic despite being in the Japanese idiom of ink on a gold background.

The two six-panel screens show tree bark and pine needles separated by differing brush strokes, and the white snow seems to weigh down the branches.

However, the dragons, according to art critics such as Paine, demonstrate a weakness; they are treated academically, thus losing their grand, legendary essence.