Red Barns

Date1933

Label TextKenjiro Nomura immigrated to the United States from Japan in 1907, at the age of eleven. When he was sixteen, his parents returned home, but he stayed and settled in Seattle to build a successful career as a sign painter. A self-described “Sunday painter” with little formal training, Nomura specialized in the realist style and vernacular subject matter associated with 1930s American Scene painting. This painting’s view of the rural farmlands of western Washington is typical of his regionalism. Yet, even as he mastered this decidedly Western approach, he also maintained expertise in traditional Japanese painting, whose conventions of color, composition, and line inspired him to approach nature intuitively and on his terms.

Object number33.224

Photo CreditPhoto: Scott Leen

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Annual Exhibition of Northwest Artists, 1933. Tacoma, Washington, Tacoma Art Museum, 100 Years of Washington Art: New Perspectives, Nov. 24, 1989 - Feb. 11, 1990. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, The View From Here: The Pacific Northwest 1870-1940, July 1, 2004 - Feb. 27, 2005. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Painting Seattle: Kamekichi Tokita and Kenjiro Nomura, Oct. 22, 2011 - Feb. 19, 2012. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Northwest Modernism: Four Japanese Americans, Mar. 20, 2021 - June 5, 2022. Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, American Art: The Stories We Carry, Oct. 20, 2022 - ongoing.Published ReferencesSeattle, Washington, "Town Crier", pp. 9-10, October 21, 1933. Johns, Barbara. Signs of Home: The Paintings and Wartime Diary of Kamekichi Tokita, in association with Painting Seattle: Kamekichi Tokita and Kenjiro Nomura. Seattle, Washington: University of Washington Press, 2011; pp. 75-76, reproduced fig. 57. Johns, Barbara. Kenjiro Nomura American Modernist: An Issei Artist's Journey. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2021; p. 37, reproduced fig. 2.11.

Credit LineEugene Fuller Memorial Collection

Dimensions28 x 36 in. (71.1 x 91.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas