Cool Evening at a Restaurant, Kiyoshi Kobayakawa

Cool Evening at a Restaurant, Kiyoshi Kobayakawa (1933)

This woman lounging in a private room at a tradition Japanese restaurant is Ichimaru, one of the leading singers and geisha of Japan's pre-war period. She was a frequent model for Kobayakawa's paintings. Kobayakawa was first known for his paintings depicting subjects from the worlds of ukiyo-e and Christianity, but as seen here, he began painting genre scenes around this periods. In this painting Ichimaru sits in exquisite beauty, cooling herself with a fan. This surpasses a simple portrait of an individual woman; it is an image of ideal beauty, filled with a quiet sensibility.

Kobayakawa was born in Fukuoka and traveled to Kyoto around 1912 where he studied Nihonga painting with
Kaburagi Kiyokata. This work was awarded a special prize in the 14th Teien exhibition held in 1933 and is a noteworthy indication that Kobayakawa had begun to focus on contemporary female genre subjects.