Description

This celebrated work by Tamura Suio was acquired from Osaka in 1976, donated to the museum in 1985, and was included in the 1998 exhibition Highlights of Asian Paintings at the Nara National Museum and the Suntory Museum of Art in Japan. It depicts four women of fashion at leisure who are interrupted by the arrival of a young man, the lover of one of the women. Former director Sherman Lee remarked on the pictorial design of such paintings of beautiful women, explaining that "the placement of the figures and their interrelations, psychological and aesthetic, show a calculation and subtlety worthy of the great decorative masters."

Provenance

Takeoka Toyota 武岡豐太 [1864–1931], Kobe, Japan (? by 1923–?); (Hosomi Ryo 細見良 [1901–1978], Osaka, Japan, sold to Mr. and Mrs. Kelvin Smith) (?–1976); The Kelvin Smith Collection, Cleveland, OH, given by Mrs. Kelvin [Eleanor Armstrong] Smith [1899–1998] to the Cleveland Museum of Art (1976–1985); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1985–)