Antonio Fontanesi, from Italy to Japan

One hundred and fifty years after his arrival in Japan, Antonio Fontanesi returns to the centre of a major exhibition tracing his career between Italy, Europe and Japanese artistic culture. From 17 October 2026 to 24 January 2027, the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum in Tokyo presents the first major retrospective devoted to the artist in Japan. Around 200 works follow his career from his early years to maturity, placing his paintings alongside those of his Japanese pupils and Italian artists influenced by his work. Born in Reggio Emilia in 1818, Fontanesi trained at the local school of fine arts and volunteered in the First Italian War of Independence in 1848. After the conflict, he moved to Switzerland, settling in Geneva, and later spent time in France and England. His encounter with the Barbizon School and the work of Turner contributed to the development of a landscape painting far removed from topographical description, shaped instead by light, atmosphere and an often melancholic vision of nature. In 1869, he was appointed professor of landscape painting at the Accademia Albertina in Turin. The Japanese chapter began in 1876. At the age of 58, Fontanesi was invited by the Meiji government to teach painting at the newly established Kōbu Bijutsu Gakkō, the Technical Art School in Tokyo, founded to introduce Western artistic methods and techniques to Japan. He remained in the country for two years, teaching oil painting, drawing and perspective to a generation of young artists who would contribute to the development of modern Western-style painting in Japan, including Asai Chū and Koyama Shōtarō. The exhibition places this experience in the context of Fontanesi’s broader practice. Works such as Plateau of the Bugey, Pensive Shepherd and The Old Market in Florence document different phases of a career in which trees, skies, waterways and figures become elements in compositions dominated by changes in light and atmosphere. The exhibition extends to the large canvases of his final years, including Clouds from 1880. Alongside works drawn particularly from GAM - Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, the exhibition presents paintings by Fontanesi’s Japanese pupils as well as Italian contemporaries and artists of subsequent generations. His stay in Tokyo occupied only two years of a career developed largely in Europe, but left an important mark on the formation of modern Japanese painting. The retrospective takes this connection as its starting point to reconsider Fontanesi within the history of 19th-century European landscape painting.