Nude Beauty

On a hillside thick with green wild grass, a woman lies with her lower body covered by a vermilion cloth, her feet toward the viewer and her left hand serving as a pillow. Behind her, a yellow hill, purplish distant mountains and white clouds overlap, and a large reddish cloud floats in the sky. The red oval area is thought to represent the sun hidden behind the clouds.

Yorozu entered the Western painting department of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1907 and responded to French Post-Impressionist painting. Yorozu himself said that this work, painted in 1912, showed the influence of van Gogh and Matisse. Traces of that can be seen in the undergrowth that sways like flames and the nude simplified with thick brushstrokes, but the strongly frontal composition, the use of outlines, and the sense of form and color in the background are Yorozu's own.

At a time when plein-air painting, which depicted bright outdoor light, was the mainstream, this work was bold and avant-garde. As a picture that opened the Taisho era, it holds an important place in the history of modern Western-style painting in Japan. It was donated in fiscal 1954 and entered the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and was designated an Important Cultural Property in 2000.