Girl in the park 1957

Tsuguharu Foujita made this lovely scene, Girl in the Park, with oil paint, and you can feel him balancing all the different worlds he was part of. Look at the soft strokes that build the park background—it’s like a dream, with everyone enjoying themselves. The brushwork in the trees shows he’s been looking at classical Japanese landscape painting. The colour palette has a kind of gold all over—it is not quite warm, but it glows. I can imagine him building up the layers, figuring out how to mix his Japanese and European influences. I wonder what he was thinking? I see the girl holding a cat – it's so tender. She is in the foreground, and her skin is smooth and porcelain-like. For me, this piece is about merging cultures and styles, making something new from different traditions. It shows how artists talk to each other across time, borrowing and changing ideas to make art that speaks from the heart.