Shōen was born in
Shimogyō-ku, Kyoto, as the second daughter of a
tea merchant. She was born two months after the death of her father and, thus, grew up with her mother and aunts in an all-female household. Her mother's tea shop attracted a refined, cultured clientele for the art of Japanese
tea ceremony. As a child at age 12 (1887), Shōen drew pictures and exhibited considerable skill at drawing human figures. By the age of 15 (1890) she was exhibiting her work and winning awards in official art contests as well as commissioning work for private patrons. Shōnen himself however later revealed to Shōkō at the age of 14 that he was his father. In 1894, Shōen became a disciple of
Kōno Bairei and later of his successor
Takeuchi Seihō. She won her first local award in 1898 with a work selected for the
Exhibition of New and Old Art ("Shinko Bijutsu Tenrankai" or "Shinkoten") in Kyoto. She won her first national award in 1900 for a painting submitted to an exhibition sponsored by the
Japan Fine Arts Academy (
Nihon Bijutsuin) with the Japan Painting Association (
Nihon Kaiga Kyokai). She later focused on producing work for display and sale at the government-sponsored
Bunten exhibitions starting from 1907. 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. Shōen painted another version of The Beauty of Four Seasons for the exposition and received an award for the painting. Shōen drew from her artistic training and her personal interest in
woodblock prints and older painting styles to develop new techniques and styles of composition with a broad range of subjects. Themes and elements from the traditional
Noh drama frequently appeared in her works, but images of beautiful women (
bijin-ga) came to dominate her work. Eventually, her work would combine the themes of both Noh and women in a single composition. With all her might, she painted
Honō (焔, Flame) in 1918, a painting about female jealousy and eternal love that cemented her reputation. Shoen described the work as "the flame of a middle-aged woman's jealousy" which coincidentally debuted in the same year of Suzuki Shōnen's death. For a while after that, she did not exhibit her work. In 1924, she returned to the art world by exhibiting a painting titled
Yōkihi (
楊貴妃, the consort
Yang Guifei) at the Fourth Exhibition of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. The painting is now at the
Shōhaku Art Museum in Nara. During the 1930s, when Shōen was in her late 50s and early 60s, she began producing very large works. These include
Spring and Autumn (1930),
Jo-no-mai (1936), and
Soshi-arai Komachi (1937). Many of these works, especially
Jo-no-mai are now considered her greatest masterpieces. 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.
Jo-no-mai and
Soshi-arai Komachi were inspired by the Noh theater. (
Jo-no-mai is a dance performed in the introduction to a Noh play, and
Soshi-arai Komachi is the title of a Noh play about the
Heian period poet Ono no Komachi.) Shoen took great inspiration from the female character in noh theater. It is important to note that men performed all the roles in noh theater including the female roles. Despite this Shoen used women models to recreate the poses of her work suggesting something of her views of women. Both paintings are characterized by a strong feeling of majesty, with a large central figure against an empty background. The use of color is carefully planned so that the light surfaces of clothes and other items stand out prominently against the
negative space. In 1941, Shōen became the first woman painter in Japan to be invited to join the
Imperial Art Academy. She was appointed a
court painter to the
Imperial Household Agency in 1944. During
World War II she supported nationalism in pieces like
Late Autumn which depicts a beautiful woman doing her part to help the war. 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. Many of her works from this period, including
Twilight (1941),
Clear Day (1941), and
Late Autumn (1943), depict working women engaged in daily chores, who display a strong sense of vitality. As with her work from the 1930s, Shōen shows a skillful use of negative space, with realistic detail, neat lines, and a calm use of color. As the war situation deteriorated, in February 1945, Shōen was evacuated from Kyoto to the suburbs of
Nara. In 1948, she became the first woman to be awarded Japan's prestigious
Order of Culture. Her painting
Jo no mai was the first painting by a Japanese woman to be rated as an
Important Cultural Property by the
Agency of Cultural Affairs. ==Beautiful women==