Terashima Shimei (1892-1975)
Early Spring, 1950s or 1960s
Signed: Shimei
Sealed: Shi
Framed: ink and color on silk
24 ½ x 17 inches (62.3 x 43.2 cm) ;
frame 32 ½ x 24 ¾ inches (82.5 x 63 cm)
Born as the first son of a cotton textile merchant in Akashi, Hyōgo prefecture, Terashima Shimei was expected to succeed in the family business. However, fond of art and literature since childhood, Shimei spent his adolescent years composing poetry and writing stories for youth magazines while one of his sisters took over the business. In 1913, he decided to study painting and became a pupil of Kaburaki Kiyokata in Tokyo. Despite his late start at the age of twenty-one, Shimei rapidly developed as a promising painter in bijinga (paintings of beautiful women) and soon emerged as one of Kiyokata’s favorite pupils. Shimei’s career blossomed with the acceptance of his work titled Yūnagi (Evening Calm) at the 1927 Teiten exhibition, culminating later in the winning of the top prize consecutively in 1941 and 1942. Upon moving back to Hyōgo in 1936, Shimei turned his eye to the upper-class women of the Kansai area for his painting subjects. After the war, Shimei’s successful affiliation with the Nitten lasted for twenty-five years until his final submission in 1971. For his artistic accomplishments, Shimei was honored with numerous awards, including the Order of the Rising Sun, Fourth Class, in 1971.
At the peak of his career as a bijinga painter, Shimei sought to represent the abstract concept of woman’s beauty instead of portraying a specific individual. His belief that sketching an actual person would inhibit his artistic imagination compelled Shimei to eschew using a model. An astute observer of women he encountered in his daily life, Shimei stored their impressions in his mind and constructed the image for his painting from memory. Thus, his figures tend to show uncomplicated poses and rarely display individualized facial features. Early Spring epitomizes Shimei’s mature style and features an attractive woman, likely a married member of a well-to-do-family, one of Shimei’s favorite subjects after the war. With her hair arranged in a simple, waved style and dressed in a spotless white coat and gloves, the figure exudes a sense of elegance and quiet dignity. The exquisite color composition based on grey and white emphasizes the beauty of the woman’s black hair and brings out the bright red of her lips, evoking her sensuality with utmost subtlety. Reducing both line and color to a minimum, Shimei achieves a gentle, impressionistic image of the contemporary bijin for which he was celebrated.
Shimei’s works are in the collection of Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and The Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, among others.
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