Byobu or folding screen in two panels, painted on silk in sumi ink, gofun or clam shell gesso and mineral pigments with a winter scene of a young beauty adjusting her skis in the snow. Signed on the lower right by the artist: Chikatoshi, and sealed: Chikatoshi (Enomoto Chikatoshi, 1898 – 1973). With black lacquer frames. Early Showa era, circa 1936 – 1940.

Enomoto Chikatoshi was born in Tokyo. He began to study painting under Kaburaki Kiyokata in 1916, and graduated from the Nihonga Department of the Tokyo School of Fine Art in 1921. In 1922 he first had a painting accepted at a government-sponsored exhibition, the 4th Teiten. In 1930, Chikatoshi’s Teiten work won the tokusen or grand prize. He subsequently exhibited annually at the Teiten, and afterwards at nearly every Shin-Bunten with non-vetted status (mukansa). After the Pacific War, Chikatoshi became a committee member of the Nitten, and continued to show his work at the national exhibitions.

During his career as a painter, Chikatoshi became famous for his “modern” (modan) paintings of beautiful women dressed in cutting-edge fashions. In addition to the government-sponsored exhibitions, he also showed his work at other venues, such as the exhibitions of the Kiyokata painting studio’s Kyodokai painting group, and the Seikinkai painting group composed of Ito Shinsui and others.

Enomoto Chikatoshi’s work is in the collection of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art.

As he often does, Chikatoshi frames the scene with color. In addition to the soft reds of the skier’s chic clothes, hat and poles, the light green of the sasa bamboo leaves echo in her collar and the padding of her left ski. These form rough triangles at the heart of the composition. The young woman’s delicate features and perfectly coiffed hair complete the image of beauty and wealth. Beneath her the white, snow-covered ground balances the snow swirling around her. Chikatoshi renders the snow with small squares of silver, a modernist adaptation of the gold and silver foil ornamentation on traditional screens. This brilliant improvisation dramatically sets off the beauty at the painting’s center, and conveys the abstraction inherent in falling snow.

Chikatoshi painted this theme of fashionable young skiers a number of times. The Gajoen in Meguro, Tokyo, has a pair of panels by the artist, now built into a hallway at the complex. On these the left-hand panel poses this same beauty, kneeling as here to adjust her skis. She has dark blue and green clothing, the same style of hat, and the same delicate features in that panel, and about her swirl small silver foil squares of snow (c.f. Meguro Gajoen: Toki no Nagare, plate 67). Another painting by Chikatoshi of a modern girl skiing down a slope under a blue sky, also built into the Gajoen, portrays the powdery snow about her skis in the same way as here, with clothing of similar style and vintage. That painting was exhibited in 1938 at the 9th Boshin-kai Exhibition, (Bijinga ni Miru Füzoku: Showa Zenki, page 75, plate 41). In this period, Chikatoshi also created at least two smaller format studies on this theme, with the skier wearing similar gloves, leather clothing with a backpack and a ski-pole in a swirling haze of silver foil squares, one of which is illustrated in Kagedo’s catalogue Yükei (number 150), and the other of which is in the collection of the Honolulu Academy of the Arts.