Sunny Day

Kuroda Seiki (1866–1924) traveled to France in the middle of the Meiji period (1868-1912）and brought back to Japan a plein-air-derived style of painting in which the realism of Academic art was tempered with the bright colors of Impressionism. A conflict arose between the old style of yōga, or Western-style painting, based on traditional Western techniques, and the new style practiced by Kuroda and others, but in the late Meiji period the latter became the mainstream of Western-style painting, with Kuroda being appointed director of the newly established Department of Western Painting at the Tokyo Fine Arts School in 1896. This work takes as its subject matter a country scene enveloped by gentle sunlight during the cold season, and while the depiction is unmannered, the red of the washing hanging in the middle of the mainly green and blue picture plane stands out to great effect.