Painting in sumi ink, gofun or clam shell gesso, silver and mineral pigments on silk mounted as a hanging scroll, depicting a young beauty hiking in snow. Signed on the lower right corner by the artist: Chikatoshi, and sealed (Enomoto Chikatoshi, 1898 – 1973). Early Showa era, circa 1930 – 1940.

With the tomobako or original box, inscribed on the exterior of the lid: Sekihou or Snow Mountain; and on the reverse of the lid signed and sealed by the artist.

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 highest honors (tokusen), and subsequently he exhibited annually at the Teiten, and afterwards at nearly every Shin-Bunten with non-vetted status (mukansa). After the War, Chikatoshi became a committee member of the Nitten, and continued to show his work at the nationally sponsored 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 permanent collection of the Tokyo Museum of Modern Art.

Chikatoshi’s modern and athletic beauty is dressed in chic Western-style hiking clothes. Raising her mittens over her sun shade, she stares brightly ahead, framed by the abstractly swirling snow. Depicting the snow with small squares of silver in an updated treatment of traditional gold and silver foil ornamentation seems a brilliant stroke, at once modern and as abstract as swirling snow. As he often does, Chikatoshi employs bright color to weight and tie together his composition, framing the beauty’s face with the brilliantly striped cravat whose crimson is echoed in her lips and the mittens over the green of her sun shade.