Portrait of a Western Woman

Painted while Yamamoto Hosui was residing in France, this work is believed to be a portrait of Judith Gautier, the daughter of the great French writer Théophile Gautier.

Like Matsuoka Hisashi, Yamamoto Hosui was among the second group of Japanese artists to study painting in Europe–those that had gone there specifically to study Western painting. After originally studying the Nanga style of painting, Yamamoto decided to change to Western style painting after meeting Goseda Horyu and entered the Kobu Bijutsu Gakko (Technical Art School) in 1876. In 1878, he moved to France and enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, learning academic oil painting techniques from Jean Léon Gérôme. In 1884, he held a solo exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris, where he exhibited as many as about three hundred works. Almost all of these, however, were destroyed with the sinking of the cruiser Unebi. Portrait of a western woman, a bust of a young woman, is one of the few surviving examples of Hosui’s European works. The model is shown in right profile. Light strikes her from her front, i.e., from the right of the picture, while the light that has reached through to the back of her head shines effectively on her golden hair. The painting is thinly painted overall, and the brown underdrawing has been kept visible even in the finished painting, at the border between the figure and the background, revealing Hosui’s dynamic brushwork. This work was purchased from Nagao Kenkichi on October 27, 1896, the year the division of Western painting was first established at the Tokyo Fine Arts School, and was one of first to enter its collection. (Writer : Masako Kawaguchi Source : Selected Masterpieces from The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music: Grand Opening Exhibition, The University Art Museum, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, 1999)