Chiura Obata's art deftly bridges Japan and California

Five recent sales trace the Japanese American painter's path from watercolors to woodblock prints.

By Sheila Gibson StoodleyAugust 20, 2026

Above: "Untitled (Gladiolus)", a watercolor and ink on paper from 1931, sold for $13,000 plus buyer's premium at Clars Auctions in Oakland, CA, in December 2025. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery and LiveAuctioneers.

NEW YORK — Japanese-born painter Chiura Obata (1885–1975) came to San Francisco in 1903 at about age 17 and during seven decades of art-making became indelibly ingrained in the history of California art. His story is unique and multilayered. Obata left home at age 14 rather than attending military school, as his parents had wanted. Instead, he spent three years apprenticing with a painter in Tokyo. After immigrating to the United States, he worked while finishing his art studies. Left homeless by the great earthquake of 1906, he persevered and became an illustrator for Japanese magazines. Like other Asian immigrants, he faced racism long before the bombing at Pearl Harbor in 1941. It's little surprise, then, that he might have been drawn away from the city crowds and the people who ostracized him to paint the rugged wildness of California and the West — what he called the "Great Nature."

"Beauty of Struggle", a four-panel wall mural, sold for $21,000 plus buyer's premium at Clars Auctions in Oakland, CA, in May 2026. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery and LiveAuctioneers.

Even as some of his fellow Japanese artists adopted Western techniques or mediums, Obata stayed true to traditional Japanese brush-and-ink techniques and primarily worked in ink and watercolor throughout his career. He spent much of the 1920s traveling into the backwoods of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevadas to paint landscapes. He was at his best when depicting sweeping views of the Grand Canyon, the Mono Crater lava flows and Yosemite's famous vertical rock formation, El Capitan, but he also excelled at intimate small-scale scenes. He kept pursuing the quintessential immigrant's dream, and eventually, his artwork was well-received. He became an art professor at UC Berkeley and he and his wife, Haruko, even opened an art supply shop in Berkeley, where she gave ikebana classes. They were forced to permanently shutter the store after it was shot at in 1941 amid rising racial tensions toward Japanese Americans. He spent 11 months interned in two of the Japanese-American concentration camps that were established in the U.S. during World War II. Focusing on teaching art, he founded art schools for about 600 camp detainees, whose work was so good that it was shown publicly away from camp. Combining highly detailed lines with washes of color, Obata's early watercolors, woodcuts and paintings of California's landscapes, especially water scenes, are highly sought after. He was particularly drawn to redwood forests, lake basins, beaches and hot springs. He spent much time sketching and painting in the High Sierra to create works such as Lake Basin in High Sierra.

"Landscape with Trees", a work on paper, ink wash, sold for $3,750 plus buyer's premium at Clars Auctions in Oakland, CA, in June 2025. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery and LiveAuctioneers.

Many of Obata's works depict water features, and a favorite spot was the Gilroy Yamato Hot Springs, which opened in 1938 as a mineral bath resort in the Diablo Mountain Range, south of San Francisco. Several of his artworks bear the title of Mountain Mist, some with added descriptors of the Gilroy springs. About a dozen miles east of Yosemite is an ancient saltwater lake, Mono Lake, that Obata frequented, returning to hike again and again. He painted the lake in different seasons and different light. A 1930 woodblock, Morning of Mono Lake, was part of Obata's World Landscape Series: America, in which 100 compositions were chosen to be printed in portfolios. Under the supervision of master printers in Japan, the project reportedly took more than 18 months to complete and involved more than 30 carvers and more than 40 printers.

"Evening Glow, Mono Lake", a color woodcut print from the World Landscape Series, sold for $1,500 plus buyer's premium at AGOPB in West Palm Beach, FL, in May 2026. Image courtesy of Auction Gallery of the Palm Beaches Inc. and LiveAuctioneers.

Trained in Japan in sumi-e, the ancient Asian art of painting with black ink, Obata used this technique along with others, some more contemporary. He noted in interviews that this technique gave his art an air of elegance and allowed him to express his ideas with just a few brushstrokes or drops. While most of his paintings were of American landscapes, on occasion he painted figures and scenes relating to his Japanese heritage.

"Evening at Clark Inn", a woodcut print in colors from the World Landscape Series, sold for $1,100 plus buyer's premium at Clars Auctions in Oakland, CA, in June 2026. Image courtesy of Clars Auction Gallery and LiveAuctioneers.

Obata helped audiences discover and rediscover the natural beauty of California and the West through his distinctively styled works of art. As inspired as they are inspiring, these riveting pieces, and to a lesser extent, his personal story, continue to attract new fans.

Sheila Gibson Stoodley writes about auctions in North America for Antiques Trade Gazette. She has been the associate editor for Auction Central News and has written and edited for Robb Report, Art & Antiques magazine, and Andrew Harper online. She also authored The Hot Bid, a blog devoted to intriguing and delightful lots coming up at auction.