After studying art with the two Japanese masters of Yoga art at his time, namely Kanokogi Takeshiro and then Asai Chu, Kuroda Jutaro went to Europe from 1914 to 1918 and intensified his Western-style painting practice, adopting a style most closely following the style of French painter Camille Pissarro. It was on his second journey that he became a pupil of the French Cubist artist Andre Lhote. Upon his return to Japan, Kuroda Jutaro introduced Cubism to his homeland and became a central figure in the art circles in Kyoto from the late Meiji to the Showa era as a particularly accomplished water-colourist and oil painter.
In Sanboukan (Lot 309), Jutaro represents the citrus fruits with as much dexterity as detected in Paul Cezanne's still life compositions. He similarly creates space and depth of perspective by means of planes of colour, figuring an intense light on the left, reflected with great shadows on the opposite side. The painting is significant of the artist's mature work from the 1960s, when he acquired great confidence in his practice, incorporating at once the most innovative elements of the European revolutionary modern art. Kuroda Jutaro thus fully realized Japan's original intentions in adopting Western art practices - to localize and internalize the imported aesthetic.