"Departing Summer" (Yuku natsu)

Departing Summer captures two young women in vividly colored yellow and blue kimonos calmly seated on a white Western-style bench. The green foliage turning yellow under a pale half moon indicates the end of summer and onset of autumn, as suggested by the title that the artist gave the work. With their traditional dress, flawless pale skin, and long black hair, the women represent idealized portrayals of Japanese feminine beauty. Yet the elements of Western fashion—such as the ringed finger of the woman on the right, and the brown umbrella next to the woman on the left—are reminders of how completely integrated and accepted such accessories had become by the 1930s, even for women who still liked to wear kimono. At the juried Teiten exhibition in 1931, the year before this work was presented, Kōha entered Game on a Summer Day (Kajitsu yūgi), which shows two women in Western dress pausing during a game of golf in a flower-covered field, revealing how even Western athletic pursuits were now being accepted as appropriate pastimes for modern Japanese women.

Departing Summer also serves as an excellent demonstration of how Kōha’s painting style had evolved from his Taishō-period works, which reveal a penchant for dramatic, emotional themes reflecting the romantic tenor of the time, as exemplified by Thunder (Raimei) of 1917, which is also included in the Patricia Salmon Collection. The more orthodox, classicizing figure style achieved in this work, with its combination of pure color, immaculate line, and exquisite details exemplifies Koha’s early Shōwa oeuvre. Originally an oversized, framed painting when it was accepted for the 1932 Teiten exhibition, it was converted into a two-panel screen that would be more appropriate for display in a Japanese home.

Born in Kyoto in 1897 with the family name of Horii Seitarō, the artist graduated from the Painting Division of the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts in 1915, then entered the Kyoto Municipal Painting Specialty School to study under Kikuchi Keigetsu (1879–1955), graduating in 1918. Even before his graduation, his work was chosen for Bunten exhibitions in 1915 and 1917 (“Thunder”), and he exhibited regularly at the Teiten exhibitions of the 1920s and 1930s. He specialized in paintings of women, at first, drawing on Japanese history or classical literature for inspiration, then later expanding his repertoire to include portrayals of courtesans and finally modern women, as here. After WWII, Koha often submitted works to the government-sponsored Nitten exhibitions and remained an active member of Kyoto painting circles.