Year: 2021
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 112 x 145.5 cm (44 x 57 1/4 in.)
Acquired from Tomio Koyama Gallery, 2023
The bright green of the dappled sunlight softly envelops a child dressed in contrasting red. Beside the child is a plush-like dog watching over her. With a faraway look on her face, the young child seems to be drifting into the time of a comfortable nap, as if about to fall asleep at any moment. Under her arm, she is holding an adorable light blue kitten. In the collection of the Louvre Museum, there is a work by Carl Larsson titled “Jeune femme allongée sur un banc” (1913). As its title suggests, the painting depicts a young woman lying comfortably on a day bed in the shade of a tree. A long-eared small brown dog lies nearby, while the woman holds a black-and-white cat in her arms, enjoying a peaceful moment. Whether Nagai is familiar with Larsson’s work remains uncertain, but perhaps the composition of happiness is more common than one might think. While retaining Nagai’s signature adorable worldview, this work seems to evoke a random and beautiful moment in the viewer’s daily life or memory rather than drawing the viewer into Nagai’s dream.
