Gekko Ogata Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, Wood cutter, Enamel Painter

Ogata Gekko (1859 – 1 October 1920) was a Japanese artist best known as a painter and a designer of ukiyo-e woodblock prints. He was self-taught in art, and won numerous national and international prizes and was one of the earliest Japanese artists to win an international audience.

He was born as Nakagami Shonosuke in Kyobashi Yazaemon-cho in Edo (modern Tokyo) in 1859. His father, tradesman Nakagami Seijiro , died in 1876, and Gekko took to work in a lantern shop in Kyobashi Yumi-cho.

Gekko was self-taught in art, and began decorating porcelain and rickshaws, and designing flyers for the pleasure quarters. His early style shows the influence of the painter Kikuchi Yosai. About 1881[citation needed] he took the surname Ogata at the insistence of a descendant of the painter Ogata Korin. He soon was designing prints and illustrating books and newspapers. In 1885 Gekko exhibited in the Painting Appreciation Society, and he became acquainted with the art scholars Ernest Fenellosa and Okakura Kakuzo.