Emerging from the Bath

COMING SOON

Emerging from the Bath: The Nude in 20th Century Japanese Prints

When Japanese artists at began to study in Europe during the Meiji period, they learned how to sketch from real models, and the early pioneers of Western-style art in Japan used oil paintings to produce their first true nudes. When these paintings were shown back in Japan, they sparked enormous outrage. In the first decades of the 20th century, the subject became gradually acceptable and the artists experimented with the nude; first the ‘bathing beauty’ became a regular feature in the work of almost all of the Shin-hanga artists. The Westernized Sōsaku-hanga artists embraced the same subject with zeal, but added the pure nude, which often had distinctly non-Japanese features, their subjects were more voluptuous, Rubenesque women. ‘Emerging from the Bath’ explores the subject of the nude and the favored setting for nudity, the public and private bath.