FOUJITA, LEONARD (1886-1968)

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"Rond Point des Champs-Elysses" (1951)

(Study for "La Rivière Enchantée")

Ink & watercolour on velium

25 x 30cm

Signed lower right

*private collection, Sydney

Foujita was an iconic Japanese–French painter and printmaker born in Tokyo, Japan, who applied Japanese ink techniques to Western style paintings. He has been called "the most important Japanese artist working in the West during the 20th century". His Book of Cats, published in New York by Covici Friede, 1930, with 20 etched plate drawings by Foujita, is one of the top 500 (in price) rare books ever sold, and is ranked by rare book dealers as "the most popular and desirable book on cats ever published" Immediately after graduating secondary school, Foujita wished to study in France, but on the advice of Mori Ōgai (his father's senpai military physician) he decided to study western art in Japan first. In 1910, when he was twenty-four years old Foujita graduated from what is now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. His paintings during the period before he moved to France were often signed "Fujita", rather than the francized "Foujita" which he later adopted. Three years later he went to Montparnasse in Paris, France. When he arrived there, knowing nobody, he met Amedeo Modigliani, Pascin, Chaim Soutine, and Fernand Léger and became friends with Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Foujita claimed in his memoir that he met Picasso less than a week after his arrival, but a recent biographer, relying on letters Foujita sent to his first wife in Japan, clearly shows that it was several months until he met Picasso. Within a few years, particularly after his 1918 exposition, he achieved great fame as a painter of beautiful women and cats in a very original technique. He is one of the few Montparnasse artists who made a great deal of money in his early years. By 1925, Tsuguharu Foujita had received the Belgian Order of Leopold and the French government awarded him the Legion of Honor. His works are prominent in Major National Galleries throughout the world. This original ink and watercolour is a study for "La Rivière Enchantée" (1951); a rare book of etchings of his hometown, Paris.