Edo, 1793 -1841 · Portrait, Dutch studies and moral realism

Under Takami Senseki's black top hat, an attentive face emerges with an almost tactile truth: Kazan grants Western shadow to the Japanese line.

Watanabe Kazan was born in 1793 and died in 1841. Samurai in the service of the Tahara estate, administrator, Confucian scholar and painter, he studied with Kaneko Kinryô then Tani Bunchô. His curiosity for Dutch knowledge made him observe perspective, anatomy and models from Europe without abandoning the discipline of the Japanese brush. The Portrait of Takami Senseki, dated by his inscription on the fifteenth day of the fourth month of 1837, is his masterpiece and a national treasure. Senseki, a portrait dated by his inscription on the fifteenth day of the fourth month of 1837, is his masterpiece and a national treasure. Senseki, a senior official in the Koga estate and specialist in Western studies, reported on the repression of the Oshio Heihachiro revolt. Kazan painted him in official attire: the face receives delicate shadows and even retains a mole under the nose, while the dress unfolds in wider, more abstract features. The agreement between physical resemblance and inner dignity is remarkable. Arrested during the repression of specialists in foreign studies in 1839, Kazan was placed under house arrest in Tahara and killed himself two years later. The "Watanabe Kazan" selection notably compared Portrait of Takami Senseki. His reading favors drawing.

In Kazan, the shadow coming from the West does not replace the Japanese line: it gives Senseki's face a moral depth that the freer dress protects.