Woman in Blue

Reproduced as plate 3 in Arishima Ikuma Gashū: Jinbutsu Shōzō-hen (Atelier-sha, Tokyo, 1932), Woman in Blue (青い女) is a head-and-shoulders oil portrait of a young European woman in a pale-green, almost iridescent blouse with rosette decorations, set against an ochre-green ground and signed "Arishima" in the upper-left corner in a Latin-letter hand. The handling is characteristic of Arishima Ikuma's Paris and post-Paris portraits: long, somewhat dry brushstrokes hatched across the cheeks and throat, a Cézannesque interest in the constructive planes of the face that nevertheless preserves the academic naturalism Arishima had absorbed in Raphaël Collin's atelier, and an overall colour-key that turns on the cool weight of the blue-green torso against the warmth of the dark hair and the deep-set eyes. The painting belongs to the foundational group of European portraits — the so-called "Paris portraits" — that established Arishima's reputation upon his return to Japan in March 1910 and that fed the Shirakaba circle's hunger for first-hand evidence of post-impressionist painting.