"I'm pleased to show the end result of several weeks' work, a new painting of one of my favorite models, Jerry, in a corner of my sitting room, leaning against an antique tansu or Japanese cabinet with paintings above. Jerry returned the other day and we did the last work on the figure, then I added the objects on the tansu behind him: a pile of books, a photograph of Oscar Wilde, a sang-de-bœuf vase, behind his wrist a stereoscope and Frederick, Lord Leighton’s bronze The Sluggard which has appeared in my paintings before. The tansu of the title is from Northern Sendai near Iwayado, and dates from the third quarter of the nineteenth century, around 1850 to the 1870s, the very end of the Edo Period or perhaps the very beginning of the Meiji. I have lived with it in Tokyo, London and now San Diego, and I loved how the bright shaft of sunlight showed up the translucent orange-red of the lacquer. This picture is all about light, from the morning sun from the east window on the right to the cooler lilac lights and blue reflections from the unseen north window from the left. As ever in my oils, some parts are very precisely painted and other areas are very loose and painterly, but all parts work towards the final image of a handsome young man poised at a balance between the youth he was and the man he will become..." Binnie, May 27 2023.
