Portrait of Tsuguharu Foujita, original photograph on albumen paper. Blue stamp of the studio "Photographie Simon's, 40 rue de Passy, Paris" on the back of the print.

Splendid portrait inscribed by Foujita on his birthday: "A Lolotte Rabinovitz / Avec mes amitiés / Je suis toujours / prêt à toi [sic] / à Yoshinoya New York / ma fête 27 nov 1930". "To Lolotte Rabinovitz / With my friendship / I am always / close to you / at Yoshinoya New York / my birthday 27 Nov 1930".

After sixteen years in Europe marked by an intense creative period in the Parisian circle of Montparnasse, Foujita spent a few  international travels. He inscribed the dedication on this handsome portrait in the autumn of 1930, during his first stay in the United States, where he exhibited at the Reinhardt Gallery in New York.

He is known to offer his head rather than flowers: “Garde ma tête, au moins elle ne fane pas!” [Keep my head, at least it does not wilt!] he would often say. Questioning his own image was a way of questioning himself: the man examines the artist at work, who thinks and poses before his own likeness. Together, they question the viewer. What do they think of me-as a man, as an artist? And what should I myself conclude? More than an act of dandyism, this genre reflects the gravity of his artistic approach, his ethical inquiry.” (Foujita, Musée Maillol)

Rare inscription by the painter on his forty-fourth birthday, on a portrait displaying the iconic traits of his artist-dandy persona: a penetrating gaze behind round spectacles, framed by a heavy fringe and a fine moustache.