Children

Chihiro began studying art at the age of 14, taking lessons in oil painting from Saburosuke Okada, a leading figure in the Japanese art world. At the age of 17, her work was chosen for inclusion in the Shuyokai Women’s Western Painting Exhibition, but all of her paintings were destroyed in the war, with the exception of one work, which had been left in the atelier of another teacher, Tai Nakatani. Following the Second World War through the mid 1950s, Chihro produced numerous oil paintings but, to date, only 13 of these works have been positively accounted for. This painting of her son and niece, titled Children, was made for a 1962 exhibit of modern Japanese art in the former Soviet Union and was the last oil painting she would create.