Kuroda Seik was a Japanese painter and teacher who was known for introducing Western art theory and practice to a broad Japanese audience.
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Kuroda died at home in Azabu Kōgai-chō on July 15, 1924, at the age of 57. His cause of death remains unknown. Immediately upon his death, the Japanese government gave him the title ‘Order of the Rising Sun.’
Kuroda Seiki was born on August 9, 1866, in Takamibaba, Satsuma Domain, which is present-day Kagoshima Prefecture.

He was a leader of the yoga or Western-style movement in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Japanese painting, and is known in Japan as “the father of Western-style painting.”
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Few artists have had as much influence on Japanese art as Kuroda. He was among the first to introduce Western-style paintings to a broad Japanese audience as a painter.
As a teacher, he taught many young artists the lessons he had learned in Paris; among his students were painters such as Wada Eisaku, who would go on to become some of the most important Japanese painters of their generation.
Kuroda founded Tenshin Dojo, a Western painting school, as well as pleinairism, an art-historical term used to describe painting outdoors and capturing nature.


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