Portrait of Reiko

This is a half-length portrait of a girl painted in oil. It is oil on canvas and measures 44.2 x 36.4 cm. It is designated an Important Cultural Property. A kimono and a red obi peek out from under a shawl in vivid colors such as red and green, and the girl with a bobbed haircut smiles with long eyebrows and narrow eyes. Her hands are small compared to her head, and together with the intricately painted shawl they lend the picture a mysterious atmosphere.

The model is the artist's daughter, Reiko, who was then seven years old. Throughout his life Ryusei kept painting Reiko in oil, watercolor, and drawings, and the way he depicted her changed with his style and her growth. This work is known as the representative work among the many Reiko portraits, and because of its distinctive expression and mysterious atmosphere, some have pointed out that it takes the Mona Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci as a reference.

According to Ryusei's diary, instead of the hard impression of earlier Flemish-style painting, he added more softness and charm, and some of the motifs took the paintings of Goya as a reference. Ryusei was a Western-style painter born in Tokyo in 1891 who died in 1929 at the age of 38.