第15代将軍・徳川慶喜は、政治に渾身の力を尽くしましたが大政を奉還、江戸城を明け渡し、恭順謹慎の意を表し上野寛永寺に蟄居しました。清方は、明治末の頃、能舞台で隣座敷に静座する慶喜に一度だけ接したことがあり、昭和10年3月に吉川霊華の遺作展がきっかけで慶喜が謹慎した大慈院の一室を見て、本作の制作を思い立ったといいます。この頃、帝展改組をめぐり、清方は改組賛成の立場をとり、そのために旧帝展の盟友や先輩と袂を分かつ結果となりました。その胸中を画中の慶喜に託した作品とも言われています。描かれた人物の性格から生活に徹したいと述べる清方が描く肖像画は、その人のくぐり抜けてきた過去がすべて現れているような表情をみせます。
Keiki Kyōjun (Portrait of Yoshinobu, the Last Tokugawa Shōgun) (1936)
color on silk; hanging scroll
164.2 x 94.3 cm
(First exhibited at the 1st Reorganized Teiten)
Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the fifteenth Tokugawa shogun, was fully engaged in politics, but when sovereign power was restored to the Emperor, Yoshinobu withdrew from Edo castle and surrendered to house arrest at Kan’eiji temple in Ueno in an expression of submission. Around the end of the Meiji period in 1912, Kiyokata once caught sight of Yoshinobu, sitting calmly and quietly in an adjoining room at a Noh performance. Prompted by an exhibition of the posthumous works of Kikkawa Reika in March 1936, Kiyokata visited the room in the Daiji-in where Yoshinobu had been held under house arrest, which is where he had the idea for this portrait. At the time of the reorganization of the Imperial Art Academy (Teiten), Kiyokata had supported the reorganization, which caused a split with close friends and superiors at the former Imperial Art Academy. It has been suggested that he transferred his feelings about the split to this portrait of Yoshinobu. Kiyokata wanted to delve deeply into the lives of his subjects based on their characters, so his portraits give the impression that they contain the entire life of the subject.
