Japanese Woman (Japanerin)

Japanese Woman (Japanerin, the artist's own title on the reverse) is an oil on canvas by Cuno Amiet dated 1933, 81 by 60 centimetres, signed and dated 'CA 33' at lower right; it was sold at Koller in Zurich on 2 July 2021 (lot 3070) out of a Swiss private collection.

A young woman with dark pinned-up hair wears a white kimono patterned with blue and black flowers above a broad pink sash; she raises one arm toward a small green glass vessel that hangs by a cord, while the ground shifts from violet-blue at left to fresh green at right. The verso inscription 'P.O. 90. Japanerin. 1933. C. Amiet' places the picture in Amiet's own numbered record.

The canvas belongs to a group of Japan-themed works Amiet painted at Oschwand in 1932 and 1933. The catalogue raisonné lists a related Die Japanerin of 1932 (92 by 60 centimetres, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen) whose stretcher carries the name 'Kikou Ymata', the large Kikou im Grünen (145.5 by 97 centimetres) bought by the Kunsthaus Zürich from the artist in 1933, and Die violette Japanerin Savada of 1933 (92 by 65 centimetres, on deposit at the Aargauer Kunsthaus) — the present painting is a different work from all of these.

That name points to Kikou Yamata (1897–1975), the French woman of letters with a Japanese diplomat father who had won fame in Parisian literary salons with her novel Masako in 1925 and pioneered ikebana in France; a newspaper report from Herzogenbuchsee records that she sat for Amiet at Oschwand in 1932 — the village's old postmaster remembered watching her rest behind the studio between sittings. Whether she is also the sitter here is not documented.