MORI KINSEN (Yokohama 1888 – Magelang, Indonesia 1959)
River and mountain Wonosobo
Oil on canvas: 80 x 120 cm
Signed “K. Mori” on the lower right corner.
Provenance: acquired before 1975.
Mori Kinsen was born in 1888 in Yokohama, Japan. Aspiring to study art in France, he boarded a ship to Europe in 1913. However, because of the outbreak of World War I, his ship was stopped in Java, and he decided to settle there. During World War II Mori was forced to serve the Japanese Occupation Army as a translator and obliged to move to Japan. After the end of the conflict, he submitted a special plea to President Sukarno, who received art lessons by Mori during his youth, to allow him to come back to Java. The President himself collected paintings by Mori, most of them depicting the tropical landscape in his typical Barbizon-style. He died in Magelang, Indonesia, in 1959.