Haystacks

Hayashi attended the evening session at Nihon Suisaigakai Kenkyujo (Japan Watercolor Institute). His work, Syndicaliste, was accepted at the Nikaten exhibition for the first time in 1916. A portrait of the anarchist Sakae Osugi entitled Mr. O on the Day He Was Released, which Hayashi submitted to the Nikaten in 1919, had to be removed by police order. In 1921, he went to France and painted in Paris and Aix-en-Provence. After returning to Japan in 1926, he became a member of Shunyokai. From 1941, he lived by the marsh in Besshonuma, Saitama.

Haystacks with shadows painted blue in an Impressionist style extend in a line at the left-hand side of the painting providing the space with a sense of depth. On the right, a meadow portrayed in bright colors extends gently. The white parts reflecting the light emphasize the hazy impression of the overall image. Whereas Monet captured the momentary state of the changing light in his Grainstack series, Hayashi appears to have been trying to capture the thickness of the atmosphere in this calm Japanese landscape and the nebulous expanse of the space. This painting was executed after Hayashi’s return from his second stay in France, when he was living in Ichikawa, Chiba. He was invited to exhibit it at the Bunten exhibition held in 1936, in which it was received favorably as follows. “Impressionist in style, its brightness makes it an uncommon existence in this gallery.” There is another work similar in composition at The Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama.