Léonard Foujita

Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita was a Japanese-French painter celebrated for his distinctive fusion of Eastern and Western artistic traditions, most notably his mastery of emulsion technique that produced a luminous, pearlescent white skin tone in his figure paintings. A central figure of the École de Paris, he became one of the most celebrated foreign artists in 1920s Montparnasse, renowned for his portraits of women and cats rendered with delicate ink outlines inspired by Japanese calligraphy. Later in life he converted to Catholicism and devoted much of his work to religious painting, ultimately becoming a French citizen.