Woman with a Pumpkin

This painting dates from July 6, 1914. The model is said to be Kishida's wife Shigeru, who had given birth to their daughter Reiko three months earlier. All individuality has, however, been erased from his wife's face; he presents her as a goddess symbolizing the earth and the harvest. The arch Kishida included at the upper edge of this painting reminds one of religious paintings from the Renaissance. When Woman with a Pumpkin was shown at Kishida's solo exhibition at the Tanakaya on Kyobashi that October, it was met with incomprehension. "I cannot sympathize with it at all" was Ishii Hakutei's harsh comment. The red earth, the plants, the road reaching the blue sky, and other elements had, however, much in common with his Red Earth and Plants, a seminal painting that became the source of the name for group of artists he founded a year later, in 1915, the Sodosha. This painting provides, then, a foretaste of a turning point in Kishida's work.