By Chiura Obata
Located in New York, NY
Chiura Obata
Nasturtiums, circa 1940
Signed and stamped lower left
Watercolor on paper
15 x 9 5/8 inches
Born in the Okayama prefecture of Japan, Chiura Obata was adopted by his uncle, an artist. As a child he was trained in ink painting, and at 14 he was apprenticed to the painter Murata Tanryo in Tokyo. He also studied with Kogyo Terasaki and Goho Hasimoto.
In 1903, Obata moved to San Francisco and began working as an illustrator for The New World and The Japanese American, two of the city's Japanese newspapers. He also did work as a commercial designer. Obata helped establish the East West Art Society in San Francisco in 1921, which sought to promote cross-cultural understanding through art. This goal was reflected in his embrace of the Nihonga style, which fused traditional Japanese sumi-e ink painting with the conventions of western naturalism.
He spent much of the 1920s painting landscapes throughout California, and among his favorite subjects were mountain landscapes. In 1927, he visited Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, creating over a hundred paintings and sketches of the high country. Obata stayed in the USA until the death of his father in 1928.
Between 1928 and 1932, he worked in Tokyo as a painter and transformed his California landscape watercolors...
Category
1940s Modern Armin Guther Art
MaterialsPaper, Watercolor