At the age of 12, Goseda Yoshimatsu became a disciple of the English painter Charles Wirgman and acquired an outstanding ability to quickly capture motifs in front of him using Western painting techniques.
In this work, transparent watercolors are skillfully used to depict a commonplace scene in Tokyo’s Sotokanda district (around present-day Akihabara), an area that retained vestiges of the Edo Period (1603–1868). First, he has established the composition of the painting by placing figures in the foreground that convey the liveliness of the town: a rickshaw driver, mother and child, police officer. He has then carefully added rows of shops and other buildings in the background. Incidentally, in the center of the image you can see a curtain dyed with the store name "Daidaimochi," which was a famous ankoromochi (a sweet consisting of fresh mochi rice cakes tossed in red-bean paste) shop located within the grounds of Shinmei Shrine in Shiba, Tokyo. The shop’s branch in Sotokanda was also well known for its shiruko (a sweet porridge of azuki beans).
(KASHIWAGI Tomoh)
At the age of 12, Goseda Yoshimatsu became a disciple of the English painter Charles Wirgman and acquired an outstanding ability to quickly capture motifs in front of him using Western painting techniques.
In this work, transparent watercolors are skillfully used to depict a commonplace scene in Tokyo’s Sotokanda district (around present-day Akihabara), an area that retained vestiges of the Edo Period (1603–1868). First, he has established the composition of the painting by placing figures in the foreground that convey the liveliness of the town: a rickshaw driver, mother and child, police officer. He has then carefully added rows of shops and other buildings in the background. Incidentally, in the center of the image you can see a curtain dyed with the store name "Daidaimochi," which was a famous ankoromochi (a sweet consisting of fresh mochi rice cakes tossed in red-bean paste) shop located within the grounds of Shinmei Shrine in Shiba, Tokyo. The shop’s branch in Sotokanda was also well known for its shiruko (a sweet porridge of azuki beans).
(KASHIWAGI Tomoh)