The Dramatic Influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e  Prints on Impressionist Painting

From the word orient, we take our meaning, ‘to establish a direction or a path based on the points of the compass’. Navigators over centuries faced east to trace the path of the rising sun to its apex for the noon sextant sighting—toward the Orient—the land of mystery somewhere over the horizon. That this archipelago of exotic lands lost in a vast sea, with its towering mountain ranges walling off enormous swaths of snow-choked plains, rain-drenched jungles, powerful emperors and marauding armies, rising and falling from power somewhere in the veiled mists of time, could elude Western eyes for so many centuries, was no accident. For more than a thousand years, with few exceptions and under very limited conditions, the empires of the East enacted a moratorium on European exploration and trade along their shores. artes fine arts magazine

This self-imposed exclusion of Asian nation-states from any Western influence–a once-great family of nations that measured their scope-of-power by the greatest distance their invading forces could be logistically supported from their capitals boardering the Mediterranean, was redefined  during the Age of Exploration. Bold expeditionary sorties were reaching the farthest corners of the globe. With discovery came dreams of riches; and with increasing profitable trade routes coursing the seas between expanding European centers-of-commerce, the Indian sub-continent and coastal cities of China, there arose a growing curiosity about the potential for profit to be found amidst the many harbors of the Japanese coast, its secretive people and the elegant coastal city of Edo, its capital.

American financial interests in the Pacific in the 19th century had long been overlooked. And so, in 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry, armed with a fleet of gunships and a letter of introduction from President Millard Fillmore in hand, dropped anchor in the harbor of present-day Tokyo. Japanese ports had been closed to Western vessels for more than two centuries, under the xenophobic rule of the Tokugawa government. Perry’s objective was ultimately not militaristic, but a show-of-force and the threat of future naval action was impressive enough to secure him a high-level meeting with those surrounding the emperor. He sought to open trade relations with the Japanese. While the American threat was overt and explicit, the opportunity contained in the message was clear: “The world is modernizing. Let’s climb on the commercial bandwagon together, before you’re left behind!” With the proposal on the table, Perry weighed anchor and left, stating that he would give the Japanese time to consider the proposal; but promising to return in a few months to consummate the arrangements.

Japan had been aware of the lucrative trade arrangements existing between certain Chinese ports and trading companies in Holland and England, particularly. They also understood that a policy of isolationism would not be in their long-range best interest. Internal political unrest was no small part of the dynamic behind the decision to concede to Commodore Perry’s demands. And so, with commercial trade agreements signed in 1855, the West was to be introduced to its first wave of Japanese artifacts arriving on their shores. Japanese traders quickly discovered that there was brisk overseas demand for their goods: porcelain, decorative bronzes, fabrics and lacquered goods. With the fall of the sh?gunate in 1867, Japan quickly adopted an international spirit of outreach and took a pavilion at the Paris Universal Exposition, in the same year. There, Parisians saw their first formal presentation of the Japanese ‘arts’, launching a craze for all-things-Japanese, coined japonisme.

It is one of the ironies of history that the first introduction to the art of Japanese print making would be as packing material for the porcelain table settings being shipped in wooded crates, decades before, elsewhere in Europe. They were viewed as exotica—artifacts from a far-off place worthy of attention—but in no way would they serve as a source of creative inspiration, given Western infatuation with the pre-eminent measure of good taste for that time, found in neo-classical styling. It took the French Expo of 1867 and the inclusion of works by a dwindling number of what had been many generations of Japanese block print makers (Hiroshige III, Kunisada II, etc. [students took the names of their masters, hence the generational appellation]), to rouse the interest and attention of the Parisian artistic community. One-hundred of these prints were sold after the exposition closed, spawning a keen interest in this style of work, called Ukiyo-e (Floating World); with the application of flat color planes, absence of perspective and appealing representations of Japanese women, lifestyle and landscapes found in these prints.

Within ten years of their introduction to the French public, Ukiyo-e prints were being handled by well-known galleries, actively acquired by collectors and artists, alike—Monet, Manet and Gauguin among them. Van Gogh claimed, “Whatever one says, even the most vulgar Japanese sheets colored in flat tones are, for the same reason, as admirable as Rubens and Veronese.” Their influence on the development of the Impressionist style can be seen in the work of many of the masterworks of the time, with Japanese dress, styling and representations of prints, themselves, finding their way into painting motifs. More importantly, japonisme affected French artists’ perception of their very subject matter, with use of color, perspective and atmospherics mimicking that found in Japanese block prints. A detailed consideration of the works of Manet, Degas, Whistler, Bonnard, Pissarro, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin will reveal these influences. And, there are many fine books available on the topic.

Here, we offer one small example, in the print making of Mary Cassatt. Her, Woman Bathing (1890-91) is one of a series made in the classic Japanese style. Cassatt, a Philadelphian, “hated conventional art,” and in 1877, when Degas invited her to join the impressionists in their reaction to the overbearing academies d’arts, she joined forces with the outcasts. She had first seen Ukiyo-e woodcuts at the 1890, Ecole des Beuax-Arts, with her friend and fellow artist, Berte Morisot, she set out to create a series of prints in that style. The result is a masterful fusion of East and West, as women and children (her specialty, though never married) interact and engage in everyday behavior, in muted tones and flattened planes-of-color and form—in the best spirit of the late 18th century and early 19th century Japanese master print makers.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor