Japanese oil painter Haruo Nagasaka was born under the name Sasakawa and did not adopt his artist’s name before 1931. He first studied printmaking in Tokyo and painted watercolors. In the late 1920s and mid-1930s, he visited France for a few years and began to focus on oil painting. Nagasaka was a member of the Koufukai group of artists. Most of his surviving paintings focus on military actions in China during World War II, where he worked for the Shanghai military news department. Nagasaka was known for his enthusiasm for dogs and on a trip to Germany, he met Max von Stephanitz, a German dog breeder who developed the German Shepherd Dog breed. His 1936 entry High Jump was a lithograph.
Japan