清方は大正9年（1920）から横浜の金沢に別荘を構えました。そして当地で過ごすときは、早朝に付近を散歩することを習慣としていました。夏のある日、白い残月のかかる朝焼けが始まる頃に、長女と連れ立ち歩いた光景から着想し、本作を制作しました。長女の立ち姿や横顔を何度も写生して本画に臨み、蓮や稲田が続く豊かな自然とともに写実的に表現しています。
大正半ばから風景画に作域をのばし模索していた清方が、「全く自分を取り戻した」と後年に振り返った記念碑的作品です。

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Asasuzu (Cool of the Morning) (1925)
color on silk; hanging scroll
219.0 x 83.5 cm
(First exhibited at the 6th Teiten Exhibition)

Kiyokata kept a summer villa at Kanazawa, Yokohama, from 1920. Whenever he stayed there, it was his habit to take early morning walks in the neighborhood. He had the idea for this painting from the sights he saw on a walk with his older daughter one summer morning around the time when the pale moon was still visible in the sky against the morning glow. He found the painting a challenge, drawing the standing pose and profile of his daughter any number of times before settling on this realistic expression with the lotus flower and an expanse of rice fields in the background.
In the 1920s, Kiyokata was exploring ways to extend his creative range to landscape painting, and when he reflected on this painting later in life, he considered it a milestone, saying, “I truly found myself.”