Sotaro Yasui1888~1955 安井曾太郎

Yasui Sotaro was a Japanese yoga painter born in 1888 in Nakagyo, Kyoto, into the family of a cotton wholesaler, and is considered one of the great Showa-era oil painters alongside Umehara Ryuzaburo. He entered the Shogoin Yoga Institute (later Kansai Bijutsuin) in 1904, studying under Asai Chu and Kanokogi Takeshiro, and from 1907 spent about seven years in Europe, training at the Academie Julian in Paris while becoming deeply influenced by Cezanne. After returning to Japan in 1914, he developed a distinctive Japanese style of oil painting from around the time of his “Portrait of a Woman” (1930). In 1944 he became a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and an Imperial Household Artist, and in 1952 he received the Order of Culture. He died of heart failure during treatment for pneumonia in December 1955 at the age of 67.