TitleOriental Street Scene in Business District
Artist
Robert Frederick Blum
(American, 1857 - 1903)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on linen
DimensionsUnframed: 11 3/4 × 14 3/4 in.
Framed: 17 × 20 7/8 × 1 5/8 in.
SignedSigned at below center right: "Blum" (enclosed in rectangle)
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of Allyn Cox, Caroline Cox Lansing, and Leonard Cox, 1959
Object number1621-P
Label TextIn 1890, Blum wrote William M. Chase, "Tokyo is a wilderness of houses covering more space than New York probably and assuredly containing more picturesqueness on one street than any three cities at home . . ." (quoted in Weber). His interest in Tokyo street life is evident in his Scribner's articles; one passage could serve as a description of this small oil sketch: In this atmosphere the heavy leaden gray of weather-worn buildings and the overpowering mass of blue, which . . . forms the fundamental color of Japanese clothing, is finely harmonized; the signs and curtains with the black or white characters hanging before the shops, the goods and wares exposed in the open fronts . . . afford a decided and sharp contrast . . . .
It is possible that Kenyon Cox, whose children gave it to the Academy with other sketches by him and his friends, received this work through William Baer's distribution of Blum's estate.
