Scene in Aizu

After attending Fudosha, Tsunetomo graduated from Tokyo School of Fine Arts. He started the magazine Hosun together with Hakutei Ishii and others. In 1914, he went to Europe and sympathized with C_zanne’s style. He returned to Japan the following year. In 1922, he took part in the foundation of Shunyokai. Although he started out as a yoga artist, after returning from Europe, he portrayed the nature in Musashino and lakeside districts in poetic brushstrokes of ink and wash and was praised as “the poet of the plains.”

Following the outbreak of the First World War, Tsunetomo returned to Japan in a year and a half or so and began working on Japanese landscapes in the style of C_zanne, which he had studied while in Europe. This painting was done on a trip to the Tohoku area beginning from Kitakata via Lake Hibara and Urabandai to Aizu. From between a thicket which has shed its leaves, a village can be seen below and gently rolling hills extend in the rear. The simplified forms captured in three dimensions and depicted in rhythmically directed brushwork on a steady composition cleverly combining verticality and horizontality are indeed a C_zanne-like work. However, while the formative structure and style are C_zanne-like, the point that a subdued, limpid poetic emotion, which was Tsunetomo’s innate disposition, is markedly afloat should not be overlooked. In due course, Tsunetomo began to feel that oil painting did not fit the humid climate in Japan and the disposition of the Japanese people. Just two or three years after returning to Japan, he shifted to the world of ink painting.