The work here, Hip in Midair, painted in 1922 by Yorozu Tetsugoro, features the far-left naked woman from Three Bathing Women, which the artist made in the same year and submitted to the Imperial Academy Art Exhibition. After being rejected, Yorozu destroyed the original painting, which survives only in the form of an eponymous preliminary charcoal sketch. Similarly, in 1922, Yorozu made a painting Naked Woman and Clouds and a woodblock print Looking Back, which depicts the central bather, who stands with her hair in both hands, from Three Bathing Women.

Now let’s take a closer look at Hip in Midair. A comparison of the leftmost bather in Three Bathing Women shows that the pose of the figure in Hip in Midair is nearly identical, except from the knees down. The artist, however, likely had in mind a similar composition for this later work. Also, the white mass at the left in Hip in Midair is one of the clouds in the preliminary sketch for Three Bathing Women, though it is unclear what the white mass on the right represents. In Three Bathing Women, the left leg of female figure standing to the right of the woman holding her hair, who reappears in Hip in Midair, is situated here. However, if this were part of the left leg of the woman on the right, it should be the same skin tone as the central figure in Hip in Midair but this protrusion on the right is white like the cloud on the left. It seems the artist painted clouds on both sides of the woman in Hip in Midair.

While Hip in Midair here from 1922 is a size 2 (26 x 15 cm, Japanese standard) work, Yorozu presented a larger version (size 6) in the 3rd Shunyo-kai Exhibition in 1924. When comparing these two paintings, the 1922 version shows the same green ground and space filled with white clouds as in Three Bathing Women. In contrast, the 1924 Hip in Midair includes wild grasses that appear to be white clovers and lilies of the valley on the ground with trees on the other side. Moreover, though the woman is also naked in this later work, the tip of her hair, which she holds up with both hands is wavy. Again, the woman in the work here is not depicted from the knees down. In the sketch Three Bathing Women, the figure with the same pose stands with her right leg is lifted slightly more than her left, while in the 1924 Hip in Midair, she stands precariously with both legs on tiptoe. The incompleteness of the current work, however, allows us to imagine the artist’s intended vision all the more.

In 1962, this work was shown in the Yorozu Tetsugoro exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura where it was dated the same year of production as the 1924 Hip in Midair.

Yorozu Tetsugoro (painter, 1885–1927)
Painter from Iwate Prefecture. While attending Waseda Junior High School, Yorozu studied drawing at the Hakuba-kai affiliated Institute. Later, he enrolled in the Western Painting Department of the Tokyo Fine Arts School, and his graduation work, Nude Beauty, was regarded as a pioneering work of Fauvism, having a significant impact on those around him. Yorozu exhibited at the Fyuzan-kai (Fusain Society) art association and Nika-kai exhibition, among others, and presented unique works that incorporated elements of Cubism, which he had independently absorbed from Fauvism. After falling ill, he moved to Chigasaki and continued his research on Nanga Painting, publishing essays on the subject and incorporating its techniques into his own works.