Lilla Cabot Perry: Mt. Fuji, the Lotus and Japan

"In a Japanese Garden" by Lilla Cabot Perry

"While the painting of landscapes prevailed during Lilla Cabot Perry's three years in Japan, one motif dominated all others - the 'simple splendour' of the divine mountain, Fujiyama or Mount Fuji. At least thirty-five versions of Fuji by Lilla were exhibited during her lifetime, and she certainly painted many others. She would travel for weeks at a time, sometimes with one or two of her daughters, sometimes simply with her chambermaid, Tsune, to observe and record the sacred mountain from all angles and at all hours. Wherever she went crowds soon gathered around her easel, amazed both to see a lady painting out of doors and to view the results on her canvases. Years later she still recalled their comments: 'very like, very like!'

Many bystanders also gathered when she went to Oya, near Karuisawa, in September 1900 to paint another sacred theme - a bed of lotus flowers. La Farge and Whistler had introduced the cult of the lotus into American art forty years before. Lilla's plein-air interpretations of the theme are vibrant, decorative, full-blown bursts of color which present similiarities with the work of certain Fauve artists and several paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe.

In June 1901 the Perrys spent a final month at Kamakura by the sea, where she painted every day. By August they were back again in Boston, but the memories of that exceptional experience in Japan remained vivid for her all her life. Indeed, years later she wrote to her granddaughter Elizabeth Grew, 'Remember when you go to a country, try to plunge into the inner life of the country and to really know the people and their point of life, their ambitions, ideals, etc. I know the French as if I had made them, and the Japanese far better than [Mrs. L.] who lived there 38 years.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist" by Meredith Martindale.)