Kuroda Seiki and Western Painting
"It is like a feeling of seeing a ray of light all of sudden while walking a dark field path. Surprisingly, it was not just me thinking like this." One of a Japanese Western painting artist Kobayashi Mango described the moment when he first saw Kuroda Seiki's painting. For young people who were disapproving existing Western paintings, Kuroda's paintings gave them fresh impression.
Kuroda Seiki, known as the father of modern Western paintings in Japan, was born in a wealthy family, and went to Paris to study law in 1884. But shortly after, he decided to learn painting instead. Impressionism enjoyed golden age when Kuroda was in France, so he naturally got to learn impressionist paintings. Kuroda's artist friend, Yamamoto Hosui (山本芳翠, 1850-1906) recommended Kuroda to visit Raphael Collin (1850-1916)'s atelier, where Kuroda had determined to become an artist and studied Western painting.
Kuroda's style was influenced by Collin's style in terms of realistic description (academic style) and plein air style expression. Kuroda negated indigenous color of objects, but accepted change of lights and painted figure in the bright light in soft atmosphere, and often used violet color in shadow. Kuroda's Field is influenced by Collin's Floreal in terms of the subject matter and the technique that portrays a figure in realistic way and describing background with impressionism technique. Also, its composition and the model's poses are very similar to Collin's entry in international exhibition. Even though we do not know about the color scheme of Raphael Collin's painting, clothing on lower body, pose that lifts the hands, head facing towards left side, and female's loosen hair are very similar.
Kuroda Seiki also received guidance from Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) who put emphasis on literary, symbolic, and mythical subject matters. Due to Chavannes' influence, Kuroda made symbolizing abstract concepts using human body as his foremost goal. Kuroda's Talk on Ancient Romance is the representative piece which structure is similar to Chavannes' Rest. According to the sketch remained in sketchbook, it is obvious that the composition of Talk on Ancient Romance referred to Chavanne's rest. Talk on Ancient Romance was inspired by The Tale of the Heike (平家物語)'s main character Kogo (小督)'s story, and presents the symbol of five senses: a lawn mowing girl representing sense of sight, a monk who plays the flute representing sense of hearing, a women who smokes representing sense of smell, a courtesan who holds the man's hand representing sense of touch, and a gourd dipper carried on a man's shoulder representing sense of taste.[1]
However, learning Western painting to merely imitate others' work was not Kurada Seiki's object. Kuroda wanted to fuse Western painting with Japanese spirits. Adaptation of Western style painting was the issue that was prevalent around 1900 with Paris Exhibition. A famous Japanese philosopher and author Miyake Setsurei wrote the article about "Japanese style Western painting" in Nihon in 1900.
"Although tools and techniques of painting are the same, every nation and culture has their characteristics. If we say using palette as Western painting, we cannot but say using ink as Chinese painting, then Japanese painting cannot be existed. We have to admit that what Japanese painting makes Japanese is from artist's heart and idea regardless of the kind of tools he uses. We should not call palette painting as Western painting but simply call them oil painting or water color painting."[2]
In this regard, Kuroda painted By the Lake, and submitted it in for White Horse Exhibition in 1897 and 1900 Paris exhibition. The paint portrays Kuroda's wife sitting in front of a lake. Kuroda's wife recalled this moment like this:
"When I was 23, I went to the lakeside to see husband paint. He let me sit on the rock, and said that study this from tomorrow. ... I wore yukata, and held the fan, and sat on the rock at the lakeside as my husband said. He drew on the canvas even without rough sketch....It took about a month beause someday it rained and someday foggy. That's how lakeside was completed in Hakone."[3]
Although we do not know whether Kuroda created this painting soley for the purpose of exhibitions, every composition was carefully staged from the fan to the pose by Kuroda. Fan was a popular subject matter in ukiyo-e, and Kuroda added lespedeza flowers in the painting to present Japanese sentiment. Also, Kuroda's other representative pieces, Under the Trees and A Maiko Girl, portrays female figures in Japanese traditional costumes with Plein-air style. As seen from his work, Kuroda tried to adapt Western style painting in Japanese context, and it became a model for many Asian artists.