Pliny the Elder’s encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (77 CE) includes the story of the daughter of a ceramic tile maker in Corinth, a city in ancient Greece, wanting a record of the young man she loved, who was setting out on a trip. She drew an outline of his shadow on the wall.
In the latter half of the 18th and the early 19th century, that story was often mentioned as the origin of painting. In fact, if we look at the history of art in Europe, “depicting a person,” figure painting, has long been a significant genre. Self-portraits by Edouard Manet and Paul Cézanne both demonstrate their abilities and were opportunities to experiment with new creative approaches. Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s portraits were an important source of income for him. In addition to actual human figures, portraits also depict the characters in stories.
This exhibition introduces a rich variety of figure paintings through 85 works from the Ishibashi Foundation Collection—looking human, from ancient Greek ceramics to modern European paintings.