中村彝

Born in 1887 in Teramachi 7-ban yashiki, Mito Uwaichi, Higashi Ibaraki-gun, Ibaraki-ken (present-day Kanemachi, Mito city), the fifth child and third son of the former Mito clan samurai Nakamura Yorimasa [?] 中村順正 and Yoshi. His father died before Tsune’s first birthday. In 1897 he entered the Elementary School affiliated with Ibaraki Teacher’s School (present-day Ibaraki University Elementary School). His mother died the following year, so he moved with his grandmother and siblings to the home of his oldest brother in Ushigome-ku, Tokyo (present-day Shinjuku-ku). In 1899 he transferred to the Aijitsu Higher Elementary School (present-day Shinjuku-ku Aijitsu Elementary School), and met a classmate, Noda Hanzō. He finished at that school in 1900 and entered Waseda Junior High School (present-day Waseda High School). The following year he decided to become a soldier like his two older brothers, and so he transferred to the Nagoya Regional Military Preparatory School. In 1904 he was supposed to enter the Central Military Preparatory School, but he was heartbroken to discover that a chest condition meant he must leave school. In 1905 he moved to Hōjō-minato (present-day Tateyama city) in Chiba prefecture to recuperate. There he met Tago Mitsuteru, who would become a life-long friend, and he enjoyed sketching the scenery in watercolors. The following year he entered the Hakubakai Daini Kenkyūjo (Hakubakai Second Institute of Western-style Painting), and then in that same year shifted to the Hakubakai Tameike Kenkyūjo (Hakubakai Tameike Institute of Western-style Painting) where he met other artists such as Nakahara Teijirō and Tsuruta Gorō. They critiqued each other’s works and the connections they honed through that process meant they all became life-long friends. In 1907 Noda Hanzō’s proselytizing led to his baptism as a Christian. That same year he followed Nakahara who had shifted to the Taiheiyō Gakai Kenkyūjo (Pacific Painting Association Institute). Starting around 1908 he and Nakahara began visiting Ogihara Moriye. They were converted to his way of thinking during those visits, and stimulated by his photographs of Western art. It is thought that he began painting in oils around 1906. His oil painting “A Corner of the Garden” (whereabouts unknown) entered in the 1908 Sixth Taiheiyō Yōgakai Exhibition (Pacific Art Society Exhibition) was his first exhibition acceptance. The following year he received an encouragement award at the same exhibition and was invited to become a member of the group. His works were rejected by the First and Second Ministry of Education exhibitions (Bunten) which began in 1907. Two of his works were accepted for the Third Bunten in 1909, “Cloudy Morning” (destroyed in the war?), and “Cliff” 巌 (Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shōzōkan, Tokyo), with the latter awarded a honorable mention. The following year’s Fourth Bunten exhibition saw his Rembrandt-inspired “Self-Portrait” (Artizon Museum, Tokyo) and his richly colored “Seashore Village (Houses with White Plaster Walls)” (Tokyo National Museum) accepted, with the latter receiving a Third Prize. He received the same prize for his “Woman” (Tokugawa Museum, Ibaraki) entered in the 1911 Fifth Bunten. Thus he came to be seen as a promising Western style painter. In 1911 thanks to the assistance of Sōma Aizō and his wife Kokkō, he moved into a painting studio home behind today’s Shinjuku Nakamuraya bakery, which later became a major art salon. He started working hard on paintings with the Sōmas’ first daughter Toshiko as model, but he had begun to cough up blood around 1912. In 1914 he set off for Izu Ōshima island, and there painted his Cézanne-influenced “Landscape, Island Oshima” (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). Unfortunately the climate there did not suit his illness and his condition worsened. This led him to return to Tokyo the following year to see Renoir’s “Woman by Spring” (1914, Ōhara Museum of Art, Okayama) which was being displayed in the Taiheiyō Gakai exhibition. He entered his “Portrait” (destroyed in the Great Kantō Earthquake) depicting the sculptor Yasuda Ryūmon in the Ninth Bunten held in 1915, where it was awarded Second Prize and purchased by the Ministry of Education. In 1916 he built a new studio in present-day Shimo-Ochiai, Shinjuku-ku, and around this time Okazaki Kii began to take care of him. For that year’s Bunten exhibition he was asked to produce a portrait from sittings by the model, “Portrait of Dr. Tanakadate” (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). Immediately after completing that work he produced “Nude,” (The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki). He was allowed to enter that work in the exhibition without undergoing the usual judging process. In spite of that distinction, the judges awarded it special status. Later his illness worsened, and he moved to the coast at Hiraiso, Ibaraki prefecture to recuperate. There he painted landscapes and still-lifes of arrangements of objects in his studio. He also painted a portrait of his friend who supported him mentally and physically, “Portrait of Mr. Sunosaki Girō” (1919, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art/The Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum). After a four-year absence from government-sponsored exhibitions, in 1920 he entered his image of a blind Russian created in visible, impromptu brush strokes, “Portrait of Vasilii Yaroshenko” (ICP, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo) in the Second Teikoku Bijutsuin exhibition (Teiten), where it was much discussed. And yet, his health had worsened as he painted it, and in 1921 he wrote his last testament with a strong sense of his own impending death. But then the Great Kantō Earthquake struck in 1923, and he realized that his only way to show the meaning of his spared life was to paint. He decided to attempt a “symbolic method” unlike his previous still-lifes, which led to “Still Life with CALPIS Wrapping Paper (The Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki) and “Self-Portrait with a Skull” (Ōhara Museum of Art, Okayama). In October 1924 he entered “Portrait of an Old Woman” (Tokugawa Museum, Ibaraki), modeled after Okazaki Kii, in the Fifth Teiten exhibition, but then he coughed up blood on December 24th and died. He was 37 years old. Over the course of his short twenty-year career Tsune faced the creation of paintings with an extreme sense of tension, an attitude that greatly stimulated his fellow artists. Many of his friends visited his sickbed thanks to his affectionate nature, and he was blessed with generous patrons. After his death the Nakamura Studio Club formed by these friends organized his works, manuscripts, letters, and physical estate in honor of his painting career. Today his Shimo-Ochiai studio has been restored to its original form and opened to the public as the Shinjuku-ku Nakamura Tsune Atelier Memorial Museum. The chair he frequently painted and other examples of his furniture are displayed in the Ibaraki Prefectural Museum of Art. (Yoshida Eri / Translated by Martha J. McClintock) (Published online: 2025-02-10)