Lot 2350: Maruyama Banka (1867-1942)

Watercolor on paper; depicting men and women walking through the surf under a twilit sky filled with scumbled dark clouds, whitecaps rising on the sea to left and with the thatched rooftops of fishermen's homes visible at lower right, signed B Maruyama.
13 1/2 x 20in (34.5 x 51cm)

One of the leading watercolorists of the Meiji Period, Maruyama Banka began his study of painting with the literati painter Kodama Katei. In the 1880s Banka studied Western-style painting at two private academies, Kaiga Gakusha and Shogido. After a period in Europe, he returned to Japan where he co-founded several painting societies, including the Taiheiyo Gakai (Pacific Painting Society), Nihon Suisaiga Kenkyusho (Japan Watercolor Research Institute) and Shin Nihonga Kyokai (New Japanese Painting Association). He exhibited with these groups and at the Bunten, after 1907.