Kazumasa Nakagawa (1893–1991) was an artist born in Tokyo who worked across a wide range of fields, primarily Western-style painting, but also calligraphy, ceramics and essay writing. Having taken up painting largely as a self-taught artist, he depicted landscapes, roses, sunflowers and still lifes with vigorous brushstrokes and vivid colours. Rather than refining the details, he consistently adopted an approach of conveying the emotions he felt from his subjects directly onto the canvas.

His works retain the very momentum of the moment the paint was applied. Although his flowers and mountains may not be perfectly orderly, they come across all the more powerfully as living entities. The joy of painting radiates from the entire canvas, and beneath the bold brushwork one senses a sincere warmth.