Kuroda Seiki—Scenes of Leisure

Kuroda Seiki received an academic education in painting in France under the salon painter, Raphaël Collin, and, following an academic way of thinking popular in the French art world at that time, he considered that painters’ essential works should be large compositions expressing some abstract concept by depicting human figures. For the subjects of such compositions, “labor” and “rest” were regarded important by Kuroda throughout his painting career.

This exhibition focuses on Kuroda’s works with the subject of  “rest”.
Reading (1891), the first painting by Kuroda to be exhibited at the Salon, and Summer (unrealized), a work depicting females playing by the water which Kuroda composed to send to the Salon in 1892, are examples painted in France. After coming back to Japan, Kuroda continued to paint leisure scenes of people talking, playing and sleeping, such as Talk on Ancient Romance (1898, burned in 1945), a large-scale painting having a composition closely related to that of Puvis de Chavannes’ mural painting, Le Repos (The Rest).

We hope visitors enjoy the sense of peaceful rest brought about by these paintings.