1860

A Foreigner Studying at Night

Japanese, active c. 1850-70

Japanese artists frequently struggled with depicting light and shadow in the heavy folds of the voluminous skirts of Western dresses, often resulting in unusual flat patterning rather than three-dimensional modeling. The curious white "highlighted" areas on the skirt of the woman's billowing dress may be an attempt by the artist to describe the sheen of a crisp fabric such as silk taffeta, a cloth commonly used for fashionable dresses at the time.