Japonisme
Description
Japonisme is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japonisme was first described by French art critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872.
While the effects of the trend were likely most pronounced in the visual arts, they extended to architecture, landscaping and gardening, and clothing. Even the performing arts were affected; Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado is perhaps the best example. Read more ↗
Key Artists
James McNeill Whistler
American expatriate leader of Aestheticism and Japonisme in London who collected blue-and-white porcelain and adopted Japanese ukiyo-e asymmetrical compositions, screens, and tonal harmonies.
Edgar Degas
French Impressionist master who drew profound structural inspiration from Japanese woodblock prints, incorporating radical foreshortening, high viewpoints, and cropped asymmetrical figures.
Vincent van Gogh
Post-Impressionist master who amassed hundreds of Japanese ukiyo-e prints in Paris, tracing and copying works by Hiroshige and adopting flat areas of vibrant, saturated color.
Mary Cassatt
American Impressionist printmaker and painter who was deeply moved by the 1890 exhibition of Japanese woodblock prints in Paris, revolutionizing her color aquatints with Japanese flat patterning and intimacy.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Post-Impressionist and poster master whose iconic lithographs of Montmartre nightlife directly appropriated ukiyo-e silhouettes, flat color blocks, and bold diagonal lines.
James Tissot
French painter who was among the very first collectors of Japanese artifacts in Paris, featuring kimonos, fans, and porcelain in elegant fashionable genre paintings.
Arthur Wesley Dow
American painter and influential art educator who worked with Hokusai scholar Ernest Fenollosa, publishing 'Composition' (1899) which taught Japanese compositional structure across American art schools.
Famous Artworks
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Fun Facts
Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints first arrived in large numbers in 1860s Paris not as expensive art objects, but as disposable packing paper used to wrap fragile Japanese porcelain shipments.
↗ Source: metmuseum.org
Vincent van Gogh was so mesmerized by Japanese woodblock prints that he pinned over four hundred of them to his studio walls in Paris and wrote to his brother Theo: 'All my work is based to some extent on Japanese art.'
↗ Source: metmuseum.org