Norumandi no hama shusaku (Study for Beach in Normandy)

This is a study for Kanokogi's most important work Beach in Normandy. The little girl in the study appears in the finished painting of 1907, illustrated in Arayashiki Toru et al., eds., Botsugo 50 nen Takeshiro Kanokogi ten 1874-1941 (50 year posthumous exhibition Takeshiro Kanokogi 1874-1941), exh. cat. (Mie Prefectural Art Museum et al., 1990), pl. A-37. According to his diary Kanokogi began making studies for the painting on July 29, 1907 and completed the picture three months later on October 28th. The finished painting was exhibited in the Salon d'automne, Paris, 1908.

Kanokogi had a distinguished career serving as Director of the Kansai Academy of Fine Art and as a member of the Bunten and Teiten government-sponsored art organizations. He studied painting in Paris in the early 1900s with Jean Paul-Laurens (1838-1921), a well-known French painter of historical subjects, at the Académie Julian. In Japan he taught at the Kyoto High School of Arts and Crafts and at his own private art school, the Académie Kanokogi.