Self-Portrait (Jigazō)

Painted in 1882 (Meiji 15) and held in the Kanagawa Prefectural History Museum, Yamamoto Hōsui's Self-Portrait (自画像, Jigazō) belongs to the small group of self-images produced by the painter during his Paris years and is the most candid surviving likeness of one of the first Japanese artists to receive a full academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts. The small oil on cardboard (41 × 32.9 cm) shows the thirty-two-year-old Hōsui in three-quarter view, the modelling of the face built up in the firm, low-keyed manner that he had absorbed from his teacher Jean-Léon Gérôme. The painting documents the appearance of the principal figure of pre-Kuroda yōga at the height of his Paris career, around the same moment as his closest engagement with the symbolist circle of Robert de Montesquiou, for whose 1885 verse-leaflet 'Séndaté — La mort du samouraï' he would shortly provide illustrations. As both a personal record and a technical demonstration of the academic portrait manner, the self-portrait occupies a central place in the early history of Western oil painting in Japan.