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A century ago today, on 15 July 1924, one of the most influential Japanese Impressionist painters died: Viscount Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (Kuroda Kiyoteru). For more than a quarter of a century he was one of the leading Japanese artists who trained in France and took his art back to lead the transformation of painting in Japan.
The son of a samurai in Kagoshima (in the far south-west of Japan), he moved to Tokyo, where he first learned English, then switched to French. He travelled to Paris in 1884 to study law, being supported by his brother-in-law, a member of the Japanese diplomatic mission in France.
However, after two years there, he changed to study painting in the atelier of Raphael Collin, where he met Kume Keiichirō, also a student of Collin’s; together they explored plein air painting. In 1890 he moved to the international artists’ colony at Grez-sur-Loing, south of Paris.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Woman Reading (c 1890), oil on canvas, 38.6 x 30.9 cm, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo. Wikimedia Commons.
He painted this Woman Reading in about 1890, making it one of his earliest surviving works.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Girl of Bréhat (1891), oil on canvas, 80.6 x 54 cm, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo. Wikimedia Commons.
The following year his style had become more painterly, in this Girl of Bréhat (1891). Bréhat is an island just off the northern coast of Brittany.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Dead Leaves (1891), media and dimensions not known, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan. Wikimedia Commons.
In the autumn of that year, he painted this fine landscape of Dead Leaves (1891), with its rich colours and textures.
Returning to Paris in 1893, he painted Morning Toilette (destroyed during World War Two), the first painting of a nude to be shown in public in Japan. He then went back to Japan, and started to paint Japanese subjects in his Impressionist style. By introducing Impressionist light and colour to yōga (Western style) painting, in what was known as ‘Southern School’ or murasaki (violet), he was a major influence in developing it from its Barbizon style. He transformed Yamamoto Hōsui’s Seikōkan academy into the Tenshin Dōjō.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Maiko Girl (1893), oil on canvas, 80.4 x 65.3 cm, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo. Wikimedia Commons.
His Maiko Girl from 1893 is less controversial, and considered one of his masterworks.
Morning Toilette caused uproar when it was first exhibited in Kyoto in 1895, as did his other paintings shown at the yōga salon later that year. The following year, together with Kume Keiichirō, he formed a new group known as the Hakubakai (‘The White Horse Society’), to promote yōga painting in its thirteen exhibitions until it dissolved in 1911.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Lakeside (湖畔) (1897), oil on canvas, 69 × 84.7 cm, Kuroda Memorial Hall (黒田記念館), Tokyo. Wikimedia Commons.
In 1896 he was appointed director of a new department of Western Painting at the forerunner of Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, where he surprisingly placed emphasis on the teaching of history painting.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Sunny Day (1897), oil on canvas, 50.2 x 61 cm, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya. Wikimedia Commons.
Sunny Day (1897) returns to painterly brushstrokes and brilliant colour.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Triptych: Wisdom Impression Sentiment (before 1898), oil, other details not known, Kuroda Memorial Hall (黒田記念館), Tokyo. Wikimedia Commons.
His triptych of nudes Wisdom Impression Sentiment (before 1898) won a silver medal at the International Exposition held in Paris in 1900, and in 1910 he was appointed an Imperial Court painter.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), Sun Setting on a Wild Garden (1910), media and dimensions not known, Otaru Art Base, Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan. Wikimedia Commons.
His later landscape paintings continued to develop his style, as seen in this Sun Setting on a Wild Garden from 1910.
Kuroda Seiki (黒田 清輝) (1866–1924), At Kamakura (at Kotsubo) (1915),oil on panel, 14 x 18 cm, Kuroda Kinenkan, Tokyo National Museum, Japan. Wikimedia Commons.
Throughout his career, he made vigorous oil sketches in front of the motif, here At Kamakura (at Kotsubo) in 1915. Kamakura is a former capital of Japan, on the coast to the south of Tokyo, and a site for many of Kuroda’s sketches.
He inherited the title of Viscount in 1917, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the French Legion d’Honneur. He was finally awarded the Order of the Rising Sun immediately after his death in 1924.
Kuroda was trained to paint in Impressionist style, and did so throughout his career. He was one of the founding fathers of the Western painting tradition in Japan, thus an artist of singular importance in its culture. He was also widely acclaimed in his day as a painter of significance in Europe, yet he is now hardly known outside the country of his birth.
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