Nude with Black Hair

Painted in 1913 during the sixth of Yasui Sōtarō's seven years in Paris, Nude with Black Hair is among the substantial Académie Julian studio paintings that returned with the artist to Japan in December 1914 and that formed the core of his sensational forty-four-work one-man retrospective at the second Nikakai exhibition of autumn 1915. The painting shows a model with long dark hair seated against a dim ground, modelled in the warm flesh tones and constructive parallel-stroke handling that Yasui had absorbed from his sustained study of Cézanne after the great 1907 Salon d'Automne memorial exhibition. The composition is built on the diagonals of the body rather than on the academic vertical axis of his teacher Jean-Paul Laurens, and the contour drawing is already firmer and more deliberate than that of his fellow Asai pupil Umehara Ryūzaburō, who was studying nearby with a more Renoir-oriented eye. Together with Bathing Nudes of the following year, Nude with Black Hair is one of the formative documents of Cézannism's arrival in Japanese oil painting and of the Paris training that made Yasui, on his return, the most discussed yōga painter of his generation.