Bumpei Usui (1898–1994) was a Japanese-born painter and frame maker active in New York. Born in Nagano Prefecture in 1898, he arrived in the United States in 1921 and established his life and career in New York. The Smithsonian American Art Museum also records him as active in Woodstock, New York.
Usui became integrated into New York’s artistic community through both his painting and his work as a frame maker. His framing business brought him into contact with many leading contemporary painters. He belonged to a circle of Japanese artists that included Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Isamu Noguchi, and Chuzo Tamotzu. Usui and Kuniyoshi became lifelong friends and supported one another professionally and personally.
Usui’s Portrait of Yasuo Kuniyoshi in His Studio, painted in 1930, documents this friendship while offering a view of Kuniyoshi’s working environment. The Smithsonian American Art Museum includes the painting among its selected works of Asian American art. Usui’s 1938 painting Dahlias was created in connection with the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project in New York City. These works demonstrate his range across portraiture and still life.
Usui also painted scenes of urban labor and everyday life. The Furniture Factory, completed in 1925 and now in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, depicts workers surrounded by the tools and machinery of furniture production. Its unusual perspective, compressed space, and energetic arrangement reflect Usui’s familiarity with woodworking as well as his experimentation as a painter.
Although Usui received recognition as a painter during his lifetime, he devoted much of his professional life to his successful framing business. His public career was also less closely associated with organizational leadership and wartime political activity than Kuniyoshi’s. Over time, Usui’s reputation became less prominent, a history that reflects the broader underrepresentation of Asian American artists working before 1960 in major museum collections and art-historical scholarship.
Recent museum attention has brought renewed interest to Usui’s work. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired The Furniture Factory in 2014, while the Smithsonian American Art Museum has presented Portrait of Yasuo Kuniyoshi in His Studio as an important work within the history of Asian American art. Together, these works position Usui as a significant participant in the artistic and social networks of prewar New York.
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