Portrait of Samurai-Official: Hirai KyoseiHirai Kyosei
1776
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
About the artist
1776
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait of Samurai-Official: Hirai KyoseiHirai Kyosei is a 1776 unspecified by Tsukioka Settei, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This portrait shows a samurai official from Japan’s Edo period. He sits straight in a dark robe with white underlayers. His face is calm but strong. One hand holds a fan. Calligraphy covers the top right corner in neat lines. Settei painted this in 1776 as part of a pair. Each image comes with long notes from a scholar. Those words explain the man’s rank and family history. If you like this style, check out Tsukioka Settei (Japanese, 1710–1786).
In this pair of figure paintings, the artist provided generational portraits of two clan leaders from the Hirai family, accompanied by lengthy inscriptions in a distinctive calligraphic style from separate scholar-officials.
Read the full account in the museum source.
