LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA (1886-1968) Maternité (Executed circa 1957)

LÉONARD TSUGUHARU FOUJITA (1886-1968) Maternité signed and inscribed 'Foujita Paris' (lower right)gouache, watercolour, brush, pen and India ink and gold leaf on paper 23 x 17.5cm (9 1/16 x 6 7/8in). Executed circa 1957 Footnotes: The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Sylvie Buisson. Provenance Galerie Claude Bernard (1957).Private collection.Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 15 November 1990, lot 147.Sayegh Collection, France.Acquired by the present owner (2020). Exhibited Paris, Musée de Montmartre, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita et l'École de Paris, 10 April - 23 June 1991, no. 47 (later travelled to Tokyo; titled 'Mère et Enfant'). Literature S. Buisson, Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Vol. II, Paris, 2001, no. 57.92 (illustrated p. 458). Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita may not have converted to Catholicism until 1959, but he took an early interest in painting ecclesiastical subjects from 1917. Maternité was executed circa 1957 and shows the artist's understanding of this traditional religious subject as an intimist and tender depiction of a mother and a child. Born in Japan into a high-ranking Samurai family, Foujita was attracted to Western culture and France in particular at a very early age. As Sylvie Buisson explains, Foujita's love affair with France began very early in Tokyo whilst stood in front of a painting by Claude Monet. As a child, he would also be fascinated by the church that was located on his school path. At school, he studied French with the Marianist brothers, a Catholic branch that looked to the Madonna as a model of faith and spirituality and emphasised the importance of Jesus not only as the Son of God, but as the Son of Mary. A monumental sculpture of the Virgin Mary was placed in the courtyard that he passed daily. Foujita arrived in Paris in 1913 and quickly became a key figure of the bohemian art scene, meeting painters, sculptors and writers of the Montmartre and the Montparnasse districts. Along with his peers Picasso, Soutine, Kisling, Zadkine, van Dongen and Modigliani, he was one of the main figures of the first École de Paris. This term, coined by the art critic André Warnod in 1925, refers to the group of avant-garde artists who came to exercise their talents in the capital between 1905 and 1930. Although all the artists in this movement had their own particular style, they came together around the idea of developing artistic modernity. Foujita's success was almost immediate and his originality soon charmed the public at the Galerie Chéron and Galerie Paul Pétrides. Through meetings in Parisian bars and cabarets he was introduced to the Tout-Paris, the fashionable and affluent elite of the city, and became a well-known figure of this bustling and fascinating milieu of the interwar years. Foujita later returned to Japan to act as an official painter of the Imperial Army during the Second World War. His work was criticised by some of his peers for being war propaganda, but he remained appreciated and protected by wealthy patrons who enabled him to return easily to Paris in the 1950s, accompanied by Kimiyo, his new wife. This was the start of a new era for Foujita, who settled once again in Montparnasse, but to lead a rather quieter life. It was during this more mature and settled period that the present work was executed. Maternité is a gentle and delicate image, reflecting Foujita's unwavering optimism. The present work, with its soft and elegant figures set in a timeless scene, proves that his art remained untouched by the horror of war and man's cruelty. The depiction of the mother and child has always been an important subject in Western art, whose origins are rooted in the religious presentation of the Virgin and Child. The French word 'maternité' emphasises the secular relationship between the woman and her offspring, and indeed in the present work there is no aureole or halo to denote the holiness of the figures. However, the religious connotations remain obvious: the child's outstretched hand, whose two fingers make the distinctive Christian sign of blessing, is an undeniable reference to the religious origins of this subject. For Foujita though, the Madonna, the mother and the woman came together as one entity, hence perhaps the title Maternité, a more secular and universal choice than 'Virgin and Child'. Similarly, the child has a very lively charm, unlike the usual figures of the Christ Child. Delivering an original vision of this traditional subject, Foujita also took inspiration from the past and used artistic codes historically attached to this motif. In the gothic tradition for example, the figures stood out on a golden background, which recalled the supernatural and miraculous character of the subject. This was also used to metaphorically suggest to the viewer that it was from this majestic image that Christian faith radiated. Thus the present work is reminiscent of the static elegance seen in the figures of Giotto and of the Northern Italian schools, which are known to have inspired Foujita. The expressive treatment of the mother's hands in the present work echoes that of artists such as Carlo Crivelli (1435-1495), whose Madonnas cradled their child with exaggeratedly long hands, creating a cocoon for the child and emphasising the figure's protective role. Foujita was similarly inspired by the Italian Renaissance, during which the Virgin was typically painted in a more realistic manner to emphasise the idea that she was first and foremost a mother. The gracefulness of her body was emphasised, giving an impression of serenity and maternal softness to this image of devotion, as in Raphael's Madonna del Granduca. The forms are pure and simple, but the arabesques formed by the figure are strongly accentuated and the neck elongated. Yet Maternité is not devoid of modernity. Of mutual influence, the artists of the Montparnasse circle left a lasting impression upon each other. In the present work, one recalls the long and slender figures of Amedeo Modigliani, whose slim faces and almond eyes bear a strong resemblance to the mother in Maternité. One could also think of Constantin Brâncuși's style, his experimentation in modelling human form and his investigation into purity and cleanliness of line. Although it is more subtle, the influence of the Cubist revolution is also visible in Foujita's use of local colour, which focuses on the subject seen under a flat light with no adjustments for form with shadows or colours. Moreover, the present work is characteristic of Foujita's style from the 1920s onwards. It combines the fine black line reminiscent of the distinctive ink line of traditional Eastern paintings, with an absence of perspective and the sinuous line of traditional Japanese pictorial art. Foujita himself described this dialogue of influence and inspiration in the 1950s - 'My body grew up in Japan, but my painting grew up in France' - as he became a Japanese painter who joined the world of Western painters. His adoption of the name 'Léonard' when he was baptised, as a tribute to Leonardo Da Vinci, confirmed his debt to Italian primitive painting and to the Florentine and Sienese Madonnas of the 15th and 16th centuries. But Foujita remained true to this double culture and strove to blend them both in a style that would remain his. Indeed, regardless of the Western origin of the present subject, the Japanese calligraphic tradition is still evident in the precision and finesse of the l... This lot is subject to the following lot symbols: * AR * VAT on imported items at a preferential rate of 5% on Hammer Price and the prevailing rate on Buyer's Premium. AR Goods subject to Artists Resale Right Additional Premium. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com