The Artist's Widow Syndrome East and West: The Case of Foujita Kimiyo

My intention in writing about the late Foujita Kimiyo, the fifth and last wife and the long-surviving widow of the Japanese artist Foujita Tsuguharu (1886–1968), is to examine the wide discrepancy and inconsistencies that art historians encountered in attempting to work on Foujita between his death and Kimiyo’s own in 2009 at the age of nearly one hundred, and to discuss how the situation has since evolved. His widow Kimiyo, as the executor of the Foujita estate, maintained tight control of the estate and refused to support writing and publishing on Foujita or to grant permission to use his images for nearly twenty years after his death; nor did she hesitate to resort to litigation. In the decade before her death in 2009 and continuing in the directives of her will, Kimiyo bequeathed the lovingly guarded treasures of the Foujita estate to the French and Japanese public. As preamble, and in an attempt to put Kimiyo’s experience into a larger perspective, I would like to begin with a brief exploration of the stereotypes of the widow and the artist’s widow, and to make a case in defense of the widow, the artist’s widow, and particularly Kimiyo.