Mt. Fuji (The Last Work)

Mt. Fuji, traditionally known as The Last Work (絶筆) by Aoyama Kumaji, is a small 21.6 × 27 cm oil on board painted on 11 December 1932 — the day of the artist's death. According to the documentation that accompanies the painting in private hands, Aoyama produced the work on a train as he traveled to visit a sick brother; he died suddenly at his destination on arrival, making this oil sketch his final work. The composition is a quick view of Mount Fuji from the train window, with the snow-covered cone occupying the upper part of the panel and a horizontal foreground of fields and tree lines rendered in rapid, tonal brushwork. The small board and the speed of execution are characteristic of plein-air oil sketches in the European nineteenth-century tradition, and the painting belongs to that lineage rather than to the more developed Mount Fuji compositions of his Tokyo yōga contemporaries. As a memento of his death it has retained particular sentimental and art-historical importance: the painting is reproduced in Japanese monographs on Aoyama as his zeppitsu (last brush), and despite its small size and informal subject it is one of the most often cited works in his catalogue. It remains in a private collection in Japan.