Looking to the Fields

"Looking to the Fields" is the fourth in a series of thematic exhibitions which began in 2007 to showcase the work of Kuroda Seiki.

A Western-style painter of the Meiji period, Kuroda is known for Lakeside and other such works. He employed an Impressionist style of expressing light, yet unlike Impressionist painters who preferred to portray the modernizing cities of their time, Kuroda loved pastoral landscapes and sympathized with the Barbizon school of painters. During his period of study in France, much of his work depicted Grez-sur-Loing, an area on the outskirts of Paris.

After his return to Japan in 1893, he began to include human figures in his landscapes to express abstract concepts. He chose agricultural labor as the theme for these "conceptual" works, which depict the farmlands of Japan.

In addition to paintings by Kuroda, this exhibition features works by painter Asai Chu, who studied the Barbizon style prior to Kuroda. These include Vegetable Garden in Spring and other European farmland scenes painted during Chu's year-long stay in France from 1900. These works provide an insight into the painters' respective interpretations of the Barbizon style and of pastoral landscapes.