“The Gift of the Sea” is an oil painting made by Aoki Shigeru in 1904. The painting depicts a scene of nude fishermen walking along a shoreline with their captured haul saddled onto their shoulders. The composition of the work pushes the viewer’s vision to the left side as all figures face and walk towards that direction. This push to the left is also emphasized through the spears of the fishermen, which look like arrows directly informing the viewer to follow its trajectory. Aoki Shigeru has rendered the painting in a crude manner with the brushstrokes violently plastered on with a disharmonious, but highly contrasting colour palette of reddish browns, blues, and greens. Despite the messy brushwork, the outlines of the figures are clear and prominent. This bold outlining
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The elongated horizontal length of the work becomes evocative of the screen paintings or triptychs in early Japan.
While this work of Aoki Shigeru is dated to be a part of the Meiji period, I believe it is more accurate to state that “The Gift of the Sea,” reflects the trend of yōga art during the early Taisho period. “The Gift of the Sea,” like the other Meiji yōga works of art, adopts various western attributes. The painting is made on a traditional western medium of oil, and the figures are not only nude, but include shading to present a naturalistic sense of depth excluded from previous Japanese works. Aoki Shigeru specifically uses the technique of atmospheric perspective on the fishermen to create a sense of space to the painting. Yōga artists in the Meiji period incorporated the western style of painting in order to prove that they were of equal standing to the West. As a result, many Meiji artists like Yamamoto Hosui painted in a classical style that demanded high technical skills to show that Japanese artists could paint in the same complex manner as the West. However, as described before, the brushwork in “The Gift of the Sea,” is incredibly loose and from a
The elongated horizontal length of the work becomes evocative of the screen paintings or triptychs in early Japan.
While this work of Aoki Shigeru is dated to be a part of the Meiji period, I believe it is more accurate to state that “The Gift of the Sea,” reflects the trend of yōga art during the early Taisho period. “The Gift of the Sea,” like the other Meiji yōga works of art, adopts various western attributes. The painting is made on a traditional western medium of oil, and the figures are not only nude, but include shading to present a naturalistic sense of depth excluded from previous Japanese works. Aoki Shigeru specifically uses the technique of atmospheric perspective on the fishermen to create a sense of space to the painting. Yōga artists in the Meiji period incorporated the western style of painting in order to prove that they were of equal standing to the West. As a result, many Meiji artists like Yamamoto Hosui painted in a classical style that demanded high technical skills to show that Japanese artists could paint in the same complex manner as the West. However, as described before, the brushwork in “The Gift of the Sea,” is incredibly loose and from a