Woman with Sculpture

This work was one of three works from the group exhibited by the artist prior to his death from illness at the young age of 36 just after the end of World War II. Matsumoto is known as a painter who created a quiet, refined, urban lyricism, and is also known as one of the anti-war artists of World War II who opposed the militarism of the war years in an essay titled "Living Painters." The true sense of his anti-war feelings were expressed in his earnest reactions to the sincere trust he felt for artistic truth and the universal qualities of humanity. Here, in the midst of a brown background, a woman wearing diaphanous robes stands looking at and touching a sculpture, exuding a clear, quietly elegiac quality. Or do we have this sense because it is one of the artist's last works?