Tomioka Tessai

Tomioka Tessai (Kyoto, 1837 – 1924) was a Japanese Nanga painter and one of the last major figures of the Bunjinga tradition, as well as an early leading artist of the Nihonga movement. After his father's death, when he was still a child, he lived in the house of the Buddhist poet and nun Ōtagaki Rengetsu, who became his mentor and intellectual supporter.

During the Meiji period he travelled widely across the country, from Nagasaki to Hokkaido, and served as a Shinto priest at several shrines. After settling back in Kyoto in 1882, he defended traditional Japanese painting methods against the growing influence of Western-style painting (yōga). His mature style drew on Chinese Nanga, based on late Ming painters from Suzhou and Jiangsu. He used rich colours to depict figures within landscapes, often with historical or literary themes, and his late works combine monochrome ink with touches of bright pigment.

He is credited with producing around 20,000 paintings. He was appointed official painter to Emperor Meiji in 1907 and became a member of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy (Teikoku Bijutsu-in) in 1919. His work influenced artists such as Keisen Tomita.