Atelier

In a bright room, a half-naked woman model sits on a chair. To her left a painter works at an easel, and another canvas stands propped up behind. It is an oil painting, 72.8 cm high by 60.6 cm wide.

According to the Kagoshima City Museum of Art, the room depicted is probably the classroom in Paris of Kuroda's teacher Collin, at the Academie Colarossi where Kuroda studied. Built around the soft light gathering on the model's hair, arms, and back in backlight, the picture is unified in a bright, clean palette and is praised as showing his individuality and talent as a plein-air painter.

Kuroda was born in Takamibaba, Kagoshima City, in 1866 and went to study in France at 18. Two years later he switched from the study of law, his original purpose, to painting. He later devoted himself to teaching Western-style painting in Japan and came to be called the father of modern Japanese Western-style painting.