Uemura Shōen (上村 松園, April 23, 1875 – August 27, 1949) was the pseudonym of an artist in Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa period Japanese painting.

Shōen was known primarily for her bijin-ga, or paintings of beautiful women, in the nihonga style, although she produced numerous works on historical themes and traditional subjects.

Shōen is considered a major innovator in the bijin-ga genre despite the fact she often still used it to depict the traditional beauty standards of women.

Bijin-ga gained criticism during the Taisho era while Shōen worked due to its lack of evolution to reflect the more modern statuses of women in Japan.

During bijin-ga's conception in the Tokugawa, or Edo, period, women were regarded as lower class citizens and the genre often reflected this implication onto its female subjects.

Within the Taisho era, women had made several advancements into the Japanese workforce, and artistry specifically was becoming more popular outside of pass times for the elite, which opened way for Shōen's success.

This was quite unusual for the time, and although Shōen did have successful contemporaries who were female, such as Ito Shoba (1877–1968) and Kajiwara Hisako (1896–1988), women were largely still not part of the Japanese public art scene outside of Tokyo.

[1] Among Japan's wedding traditions, specifically among upper-class unions, brides were gifted a konrei chōdo (bridal furnishing set), usually containing art supplies, such as brushes and paints.

Provided with the necessary tools, many women pursued painting as an individual and private hobby, out of the public eye and in an amateur setting.

Due to most women of the time's lack of formal education in the arts, few made a professional career of painting, regardless of how talented they may be.

[2] Shōen was sent to the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School, where she studied under the Chinese style landscape painter Suzuki Shōnen (1849–1918).

The purchase of her painting, The Beauty of Four Seasons, by the Duke of Connaught on his visit to Japan, raised her to celebrity status at the mere age of fifteen.

Shōen was chosen shortly after by the Japanese government to have her work shown in the Chicago World Exposition of 1893 along with many other prominent artists at the time, all older and mostly from Tokyo in comparison.

It is believed that the model for Jo-no-mai is Shoen's daughter-in-law portraying a confident and dignified women in a brilliantly colored orange kimono fading into a cloud pattern at the hem.

Despite her advanced age, she traveled to the war zone in China at the invitation of the Japanese government for propaganda purposes, to prove to people back home that all was going well.

In Women Walking Against a Snowstorm (1911), a dramatic action scene is depicted of a beautiful woman not bending to the elements or the power of the storm.