Nishimura Shigenaga

1697-1756 Japanese

Pioneered uki-e perspective and early landscapes

Nishimura Shigenaga was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. Shigenaga was born c. 1697 in Edo (modern Tokyo). He worked as a landlord in Tōriabura-chō before moving to the Kanda district, where he ran a bookshop and taught himself art; he is not known to have had a teacher. His work began to appear c. 1719. He worked in a variety of genres and formats. His earlier work tended to be yakusha-e portraits of kabuki actors in the style of the Torii school; his later work is in an idiom more his own, incorporating the influence of Okumura Masanobu and Nishikawa Sukenobu. Other genres he worked in include landscapes, kachō-e pictures of scenes of nature, and historical scenes. He made a number of uki-e "floating pictures" incorporating geometric perspective. The number of uki-e he produced was second only to Masanobu, who asserted himself the originator of the technique. Shigenaga's better-known work includes the series Fifty-four Sheets of Genji, a collaborative series with Torii Kiyomasu II in c. 1730–35; and the Picture Book of Edo Souvenirs in 1753. He produced some of the earliest ukiyo-e landscape prints; in 1727, his was the first set of prints of Lake Biwa. His work had a strong influence on later artists such as Suzuki Harunobu and Ishikawa Toyonobu, who may have been students of Shigenaga's; Toyonobu may have been Nishimura Shigenobu, Shigenaga's most prominent student.