Kiyohara Tama

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Kiyohara Tama
Born Kiyohara Tamayo
1861
Tokyo, Japan
Died 1939
Tokyo, Japan
Spouse Vincenzo Ragusa

Kiyohara Tama 清原玉 (1861-1939). Also known as Kiyohara Otama (清原お玉), Eleonora Ragusa, or Ragusa Tama (ラグーザ・玉). Her real name was Kiyohara Tamayo (清原多代).

[edit] Biography

Kiyohara Tama was a Japanese woman born in Tokyo in 1861 who married Italian sculptor Vincenzo Ragusa and followed him to Sicily in 1882. Vincenzo Ragusa had been invited to Japan by the Japanese government to teach Western art. There he met her family and convinced some of its members, including 21-year-old Tama, to follow him to Sicily to open an art school.

She later changed her name to Eleonora Ragusa and lived in Palermo for 51 years, until 1933. After her husband's death in 1927, her family sent an adolescent niece of hers to Sicily on a trip that was to last several years to find her and convince her to go back to Japan, which she finally did in 1933. By then she could barely speak Japanese anymore. She died in Tokyo in 1939. Kiyohara was herself a painter of great skill, but most of the works she left in Japan were destroyed during WWII, while those left in Italy are still exhibited in various private collections. One of the few existing portraits of her is a bust made by her husband conserved in Tokyo.

According to her desire, half of her ashes are in Japan, half lie in Palermo next to her husband's grave.

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