Young Woman with a Lily

A young woman has momentarily paused during or having just returned from an outing, wearing an undecorated pale white kimono with a boldly patterned obi. Her hair is coiffed in one of the various types of sokuhatsu 束髪styles, inspired by Western women’s hairstyles (such as those of the so-called “Gibson Girls”), which became popular around the mid-1880s and 1890s, and which became associated with the liberated, “new woman” of Japan of the early twentieth century. The open Western-style umbrella signals that she had been out in a spring shower. White lilies are often associated with purity and chastity in the Japanese tradition, perhaps the artist is constructing an ideal image of a young woman of the day.

The eldest of three brothers, Odake Etsudō was born in Niigata Prefecture. He and his two broth¬ers, Chikuha and Kokkan, all pursued careers as painters, and achieved a goodly amount of fame in their day. To receive training in painting, Etsudō went to Tokyo to study with Utagawa Kunimasa of the Ukiyo-e school and Kobori Tomone, a Yamato-e painter who specialized in historical figures. Later he created a hybrid style, as represented here, combining the styles of Ukiyo-e and traditional Tosa schools. After relocating to Osaka, he became a member of the Osaka Art Association (Osaka Bijutsu Kai) and other art organizations and was well received at public exhibitions. He then returned to Tokyo to learn the Shinga (New Painting) style advocated by the Japan Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsuin). He became a member of the Southeast Painting Group (Tatsumi Gakai), an artist-run group located at Fukagawa in southeast Tokyo. He and his brothers were regularly featured in Bunten and Teiten exhibitions and were active in various art circles, organizations, and competitions in the early 1910s, around the time this painting was made, but none were accepted for the seventh Teiten in 1913. In protest the brothers organized the Rakusen-ten (Exhibit of Rejected Works) and were joined by other artists who were similarly critical of Teiten’s criteria for selection and its excessive popularization and commercialization both in Tokyo and Kansai.