Kyoto Prefectural Insho-Domoto Museum of Fine ArtsKinugasa

Muses – The Models Who Inspired Insho's Art

Now showing15 October 2026 – 20 December 2026¥600

60th-anniversary show on how Domoto Insho painted women across his career, from entertainment-district women in his youth to modern works like Takamine Hideko in Black.

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On now All of November 2026

Domoto Insho's younger sister sat for Princess Konohanasakuya, the 1929 goddess the museum calls a signature work, and here it hangs beside its preparatory drawing.

The 64 works on the checklist cover about 60 years of Insho painting women: sketches for the magazine illustration contests he kept placing in as a teenager, Yumeji-style pictures from the 1910s, geiko in the first week of the New Year, and Eight Hours (1951), working women done with Cubist methods. You can follow the actress Takamine Hideko from a sketch of her face to the finished portrait in black. There's even a JTB poster for Heian Shrine from around 1951: Kyoto was selling itself to tourists long before the 206 bus filled up.

Adults pay ¥600 and junior high age and under are free. Only works marked with a camera sign may be photographed. Curators give talks on 3 and 28 November at 14:00, free with a ticket, and on 22 November ticket holders can visit Insho's Mountain Atelier at 11:00 or 14:30.

Look for

Princess Konohanasakuya (1929)
Look for the goddess his younger sister modelled for, hung with the preparatory drawing so you can compare the two.
Eight Hours (1951)
Insho's postwar picture of working women, painted in vivid colour with methods borrowed from Cubism.
Takamine Hideko in Black (1955)
The actress painted in Insho's Mountain Atelier, shown with sketches of her face and figure and the original art for a magazine cover.
Cherry Blossom Viewing (1928)
Early-modern customs painted with an early Showa eye, worth a close look for its costume combinations and colour; it belonged to Insho's mother.
Six Matters of Perception from Diamond Sutra (1974)
Celestial maidens blending Eastern and Western beauty, painted the year before Insho died and shown with its small underdrawing.