LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA, (1886-1968)

Paysage de banlieue, Malakoff

Paysage de banlieue, Malakoff
signed 'T. Foujita' and further signed and inscribed in Japanese (lower right); signed and inscribed 'Malakoff. Paris. Tsuguharu Foujita' (on the reverse) and signed 'Foujita' (on the stretcher)
oil on canvas
46 x 55.3cm (18 1/8 x 21 3/4in).
Painted in Paris in 1917

Provenance
Private collection, Paris.
Private collection, Paris (a gift from the above in the 1930s).
Thence by descent to the present owners.

Exhibited
Paris, Musée de Montmartre, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita et l'Ecole de Paris, 10 April – 23 June 1991, no. 7 (later travelled to Tokyo).
Dinard, Palais des Arts et du Festival, Foujita, le maître japonais de Montparnasse, 27 June - 25 September 2004, no. 11.
Paris, Musée Maillol, Foujita, peindre dans les années folles, 7 March - 15 July 2018, no. 19.

Literature
S. Buisson, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Vol. II, Paris, 2001, no. 17.92 (illustrated p. 156).

'I wondered why my predecessors had only come to measure themselves against Europeans with the intention of returning to occupy important positions in Japan... I on the other hand was determined to lead a serious struggle on the continent, to compete on the real battlefield, even if it meant rejecting everything I had learned up until then' (Foujita quoted in S. Buisson, Foujita, Inédits, Paris, 2007, p. 54).

Foujita's arrival in Paris in 1913 followed a tradition of young Japanese artists and artisans in training making the long sea voyage to Europe to glean what they could from their European counterparts, and return to their homeland enriched and ready for domestic success. It seemed that from the moment Foujita disembarked in Marseille he was set on a slightly different path. Although undoubtedly the advent of the First World War shortly thereafter would complicate matters for the young artist, his destiny was to make a name for himself in the West. He was keen to immerse himself in the current concerns of the most avant-garde of artists in Paris, and he quickly made friends and acquaintances who would act as his gateway into the heart of Parisian artistic life. One of these figures was the Chilean painter Ortiz de Zarate, who asked Foujita to accompany him on a fateful studio visit on only his second day in the French capital:

'The following day [...] Ortiz de Zarate offered to take him to see Picasso. Invitations to see Picasso were rare; but Ortiz quickly understood who merited them. Picasso was not disappointed. Foujita caused a sensation in the studio on Rue Schoelcher [...] Foujita spent a long time examining the African masks, and the guitars and violins that had been cut in half. He noticed cubist canvases and others that were blue and pink of scrawny gypsies. He particularly lingered in front of the paintings by Douanier Rousseau that Picasso had hung alongside his own' (S. Buisson, ibid., p. 52).

The impact of this early meeting on Foujita's artistic vision was immense. Evidently Picasso's Cubist works elicited curiosity, and one can see the influence of this in the small number of paintings that have survived from this very early date. Works such as Femme cubiste from 1914 display a mix of Foujita's own love of vivid colour and stylistic flourish, imbued with the shattered perspective and multi-angle construction of the Spaniard's experiments of that time. It was, however, the naïve canvases of the French customs officer that struck Foujita the most, and would provide a lasting inspiration that can be seen in the many landscapes of Paris and its surroundings that he painted towards the end of the First World War. The present work, Paysage de banlieue, Malakoff, is a stunning example of the influence of Rousseau, and Foujita's ever-more unique style. The work depicts a desolate industrial suburb of Paris, and takes delight - just as Rousseau's scenes had - in the mundane details of work being done, goods being transported. The palette is now very restrained, largely due to Foujita's inability to access the materials he had before the war. Using a simple canvas and hues in various shades of grey, Foujita marries the pared-back Japanese aesthetic of his early artistic education with a new European method of representation. The viewer is struck by the simplicity, austerity even, of the scene; poetic in its emptiness.

Foujita had left Paris briefly during the height of the War to spend time in London, and had seen active service as a volunteer in the International Red Cross. The conflict had undoubtedly disrupted the time that he would have otherwise spent concentrating on his practice, but this hiatus meant that Rousseau's work was still fresh in his mind come the last years of the War. Returning to Paris in 1917, Foujita had very limited means and was living the life of a true bohemian, moving from studio to studio and surviving on whatever sustenance he could come by whilst making the most of the wild Montparnasse scene. Having befriended a fellow Japanese painter called Kawashima, they attended the most outlandish balls and gatherings and Foujita enjoyed great romantic success with the artists, models and muses of the demi-monde. As his life became ever more rooted in Paris, and success started to become more apparent, his thoughts were far from his homeland. Foujita would soon cut all ties with his father, and his beloved wife Tomiko, and he would begin in earnest his life as one of the most successful painters of the années folles.