Artist | Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921 in Japan) 橋口五葉
Title | Nude (1904)
oil on canvas
Exhibitor | Smart Museum of Art, Chicago
Exhibition | Meji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan
Today Goyo is best known for his sensual and elegant New Print (Shin-hanga, 新版畫) movement wood block prints of beauties, but he studied both nihonga (Japanese-style painting) and oil painting in his youth. He left few surviving works in oil, making this an exceedingly rare and important example of his painting practice. The inscription on the back of the frame dedicates this work to the yoga (Western-style, 洋畫) painter Asai Chü (淺井忠, 1856-1907), with whom Goyo worked. The woman sits facing left, illuminated from the right as if in an artist's studio. This composition of a nude silhouetted against a wall is also seen in the artist's drawings. However, this carefully shaded painting reveals that even his famous woodblock-printed beauties, while rendered with unmodulated planes of color and a remarkable economy of means, were founded on the artist's ample experience of life-sketching.
Artist | Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921 in Japan) 橋口五葉
Title | Nude (1904)
oil on canvas
Exhibitor | Smart Museum of Art, Chicago
Exhibition | Meji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan
Today Goyo is best known for his sensual and elegant New Print (Shin-hanga, 新版畫) movement wood block prints of beauties, but he studied both nihonga (Japanese-style painting) and oil painting in his youth. He left few surviving works in oil, making this an exceedingly rare and important example of his painting practice. The inscription on the back of the frame dedicates this work to the yoga (Western-style, 洋畫) painter Asai Chü (淺井忠, 1856-1907), with whom Goyo worked. The woman sits facing left, illuminated from the right as if in an artist's studio. This composition of a nude silhouetted against a wall is also seen in the artist's drawings. However, this carefully shaded painting reveals that even his famous woodblock-printed beauties, while rendered with unmodulated planes of color and a remarkable economy of means, were founded on the artist's ample experience of life-sketching.