Artist: Pieter Irwin Brown
Medium: Original Watercolor on Paper
Series Title: Japan
Edition: Original
Date: 1938
Publisher: The Artist
Reference No.: The New Wave; pg. 219-221
Size: 13 x 17 -1/4 "
Condition: Very fine
Notes:
Signed and dated lower right, "P. Irwin Brown 1935". Many of Brown's original paintings from this era were watercolor or gouache sketches. He famously sold many of these designs directly to Watanabe, who rendered several of them into multi-colored woodblock prints. Because of his relatively short tenure in Japan and limited total production, original paintings and original prints by Pieter Irwin Brown are highly collectible rarities.
While active in Japan from 1934 to 1940, Brown blended Western watercolor techniques with traditional Japanese graphic sensibilities. His landscape work is celebrated for its crisp, "cool transparency" and restrained Northern European aesthetic, a unique contrast to the highly romanticized imagery of his Japanese contemporaries.