Special exhibit: Kuroda Memorial Hall – Works of Kuroda Seiki II
To commemorate the re-establishment of the Independent Administrative Institution, National Institute for Cultural Heritage in April 2007, the second special exhibit of works in the collection of the Kuroda Memorial Hall was held at the Heisei-kan of the Tokyo National Museum from Tuesday, November 6 to Sunday, December 2. In this exhibit 22 works were exhibited, including those that Kuroda painted during his stay at Grez-sur-Loing, a farming village near Paris that he liked to visit when he was studying in France and 4 original illustrations, “Japanese Genre Scenes,” that were used for the essay “Femmes japonaises” written by Pierre Loti (1850 – 1923) in the October 1891 issue of Figaro Illustré. This is the first time for the October 1891 issue of Figaro Illustré and the “Japanese Genre Scenes” to be exhibited at the same time. It was a good opportunity to see concretely the image of Japan that Kuroda gave to the French society.