Visiting Places Associated with KURODA Seiki: Accompanying the Tokyo National Museum Supporting Members Tour
Poppy flowers scatter like bright red confetti across lush green fields of grass. The poppy, with its thin stems and petals appearing to float, was often included in landscape paintings of impressionists, and KURODA Seiki also left behind such rurual scenes from his student life in France.
The Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties (TOBUNKEN) traces its origins to the Art Research Institute, established within the KURODA Memorial Hall. Since the hall was transferred to the Tokyo National Museum in 2007, TOBUNKEN has continued to collaborate with the museum to conduct research on KURODA, and has also been involved in exhibitions held in the KURODA Memorial Room.
Recently, I accompanied a tour in France, titled “Tokyo National Museum 2026 Special Supporting Member Tour: Visiting Places Associated with KURODA Seiki,” as a guide. This project was prepared over nearly a year with Mr. OKIMASU Kenjiro and other staff members of the Tokyo National Museum, and with Ms. MOINE-MAEDA-Emiko, a guide conférencière holding a French national qualification, who has been investigating KURODA’s footsteps in the country. Ms. MOINE-MAEDA and her husband were at the venue, along with another guide conférancière, INOUE Yukari. The guide conférancière qualification is essential for guiding at French museums and similar institutions. Witnessing their skillful and lively commentary and agility during the tour placed me in a good mood during the sections I was responsible for guiding.
In France, we visited Paris, where KURODA lived from 1885 and received his first art education, and Grez-sur-Loing (hereafter, “Grez”), a commune located 70 km south of Paris where he regularly stayed in the rustic rural landscape. When KURODA first visited Grez, mainly in the late 19th century, there were colonies of foreign artists, and even around 1890 many foreign still artists stayed there, even though the peak period had passed. Their history is officially commemorated in this commune, and in 2001, ‘Rue KURODA Seiki’ (KURODA Seiki street) was established, with commemorative plaques in both Japanese and French displayed (KURODA is commonly written as ‘Kouroda’ in French, but the street name spelling was chosen to be ‘KURODA’ which is more familiar to Japanese visitors). The Hôtel-Chevillon in Grez, where KURODA painted “Reading,” is now operated by a Swedish foundation as an atelier and residence for artists. Paintings created in Grez are also housed in the City Hall, and a dedicated exhibition was held for our group there. Behind the warm welcome by the entire city lies the fact that the city is actively preserving not only the history of its artists, but also the landscapes they loved. For the fact that we can now see landscapes no different from what KURODA saw, we owe our gratitude to regulations such as minimizing power lines, and to the people protecting the environment of Grez.
In Paris, the program included visits to the Hall of Modern French Art, where KURODA and his colleagues studied, such as the Pantheon and Musée d’Orsay, visits to view works by his mentor Raphaël Collin that are usually not publicly exhibited, and walks through other places related to KURODA’s former residence.
After returning to Japan, KURODA took on a leading role in laying the foundations of Japanese modern art through art education and the establishment of exhibition systems, but due to his extremely busy schedule he was not able to devote himself fully to painting production. However, even during this period, KURODA kept focusing on everyday landscapes such as garden plants and suburban farmland, and continued to paint when he could.
This tour once again taught me that KURODA’s roots were nurtured during his free and sincere student life as an artist in France.