Kazaguruma no aru fūkei

Landscape with a Windmill was painted in 1877 by Hyakutake Kaneyuki. The oil work shows a snow-covered windmill in a stormy winter landscape. At the margins, a person wanders past a house with a dog and cattle.

The painting is signed at the bottom left “Y. Hiakatake 1877 London — Copy after C. Richardson.”

Hyakutake, a Japanese diplomat, embarked on a journey to England with the Iwakura Mission in 1971. While studying economics at Oxford, he took up painting in 1875 at the age of thirty-three. His teacher, Thomas Miles Richardson, Jr., came from a large family of landscape painters. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, and he loved to paint the Italian countryside and the Scottish Highlands. For practice, Hyakutake had copied some of the Richardson family’s paintings — including Landscape with a Windmill, painted as an exercise almost two years after beginning his weekly lessons. Judging by the signature, it is likely based on the work of one of his teacher’s brothers, Charles Richardson.