Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection at London’s Royal Academy
By James Brewer
His nickname was the Demon of Painting. Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831–1889), Japan’s most daring, exciting, and feted painter of the late 19th century, turned out hanging scrolls, decorative screens and album leaves of exquisite detail on an industrial scale, just as the modern industrial revolution was beginning to shake the structures of his country’s society. After centuries of...