The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts
Location History:
The painting was made in Paris in 1883 (per the "1883 Paris" signature), was purchased directly from the artist on 12 December 1907, and is now held by the University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts.
Puppet Theatre shows a crowd gathered outdoors among park trees to watch a puppet show. At the centre stands an ornate puppet-theatre booth with a small curtained stage, and massed in front of it is a dense group of figures — men, women, and many children, with an old woman in the lower right corner, sitting with a dog in her arms. The signature reads "Yoshimatsu Goseda 1883 Paris," and parts of the canvas, the lower side is left empty.
The stage sits at the back, parallel to the picture plane with the figures grouped before it. Several spectators, seated on chairs to watch the play, are shown from behind, while around them men and women, young and old, appear in various poses. The real focus of the painting is this gathering itself rather than the show.
The work is said to be the first true group portrayal in Japan, and it is a representative work of Goseda's European period. He was the son of Goseda Horyu, studied under Charles Wirgman in Yokohama, enrolled in the Technical Art School, and in 1880 moved to Paris to study under Léon Bonnat, being one of the first Japanese artists to go abroad expressly to study oil painting. This painting reflects the training. A concrete link ties it to his ambitions of that moment: the old woman and child in the lower right are believed to be the same models he used in Doll's Dress, the work accepted at the Salon that same year, 1883. Signed and dated yet unfinished, with several preparatory drawings surviving, the painting stands as a representative achievement of Goseda's time in Europe.
The painting is often interpreted as a reflection of the cultural transition occuring in Japan during the Meiji period, when traditional forms of entertainment coexisted with modernization and Western influence in everyday life.
