Painted in Japan and later became part of the Hiroshima Museum of Art collection.
Painting Flowers, more commonly known under the alternative title Peonies (牡丹図, c.1887), is a botanical oil that Koyama Shōtarō produced in the years immediately around the founding of the Fudōsha (1887), and that is held in the Hiroshima Museum of Art among other comparable Japanese collections. The horizontal canvas (approximately 77.7 by 95.0 cm in the Hiroshima version) shows a heaped arrangement of peony blossoms in a low, dark-toned vase placed against a strongly silhouetted brown background, the petals modelled in the dense, tonally compressed manner that Koyama had taken from Fontanesi a decade earlier and that he was now systematising for his Fudōsha pupils. The painting belongs to the late-1880s vogue, shared with Asai Chū and the other Meiji Bijutsukai painters, for still-life subjects drawn from indigenous Japanese flora — peonies, plum blossoms, hydrangeas — rendered through European academic technique. It is one of the few of Koyama's exhibition paintings of the period to have survived in a public collection, and it gives a clear sense of why his teaching, and not his painting, became the basis of his historical reputation: the work is firmly drawn, soberly coloured, and conspicuously serious, without the open colour of Kuroda Seiki's slightly later Hakubakai still lifes, and it stands as a deliberate counter-statement to the brighter Parisian manner that would dominate Japanese oil painting in the next decade.
The passage describes Koyama Shōtarō’s Painting Flowers (Peonies, c.1887) as a sober, carefully constructed still life that exemplifies the transitional moment in Meiji-era Japanese oil painting when Western academic methods were being adapted to local subjects. Painted around the founding of the Fudōsha, the horizontally composed canvas presents a dense cluster of peony blossoms in a low, dark vase set against a strongly silhouetted brown ground; the petals are modelled with the tonally compressed, restrained technique Koyama absorbed from Fontanesi and began teaching to his Fudōsha students. As part of a late-1880s trend,shared with contemporaries such as Asai Chū,Koyama selects indigenous flowers but treats them with a disciplined, muted palette and firm draughtsmanship, producing a work that emphasizes seriousness and control rather than the brighter, more liberated colorism of Kuroda Seiki’s later Hakubakai still lifes; the painting’s survival in a public collection helps explain why Koyama’s lasting influence rests chiefly on his role as a teacher rather than as an innovator in painting.
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By: Sayali Ranjeet Bhosale
Painting Flowers (Peonies) (c. 1887) by Koyama Shōtarō exemplifies the early development of yōga (Western-style painting) in Meiji Japan. The composition centres on a dense cluster of blooming peonies, their delicate pink and white petals emerging from rich green foliage against a subdued architectural backdrop. Employing oil paint and a restrained palette of earthy browns, Koyama models the flowers with careful attention to light, shadow, and texture, reflecting the academic realism he acquired under Antonio Fontanesi. While adopting European painting techniques, the work remains firmly rooted in Japanese aesthetics through its choice of subject, celebrating the peony as a symbol of beauty, prosperity, and refinement.
