Tag Archives: Japonism

Art in 19th-century England

19 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Art, Britain

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Boreas by John Willam Waterhouse, 1903 (Photo credit: WikiArt.org )

Prelude

Britain’s Golden Age of illustration, the illustration of children’s literature in particular, was ushered in, at least in part, by Japonism. Other factors contributed to the flourishing of children’s literature adorned with exquisite illustrations, but the beauty of the Japanese prints that flooded Europe after the Sakoku period elevated the status of illustrators whose art was engraved and printed. Moreover, the illustration of children’s literature allowed and sometimes required substantial creativity on the part of illustrators. For instance, as discussed in a previous post, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871), featured literary nonsense.

But there is more to tell. We will now introduce Britain’s following  movements or style:

  1. the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848)
  2. the Arts and Crafts Movement (1880-1910)
  3. the Anglo-Japanese style (c. 1850)
  4. the Aesthetic Movement (c. 1850)

I will also refer to the curvilinear and very popular and influential Art Nouveau. British illustrator Aubrey Beardsley (21 August 1872 – 16 March 1898; aged 25) is a representative of the style, but Art Nouveau is usually associated with Czech artist Alfons Mucha. It is a characteristic of art produced in the last decade of the 19th century and in the years preceding World War I.

The Anglo-Japanese Style

In Britain, Japonisme was applied to furniture making and was referred to as the Anglo-Japanese style. The Anglo-Japanese style was true to the idealism of the Pre-Raphaelites in that it rejected the depiction of “any thing [sic] or any person of a commonplace or conventional kind.” (See Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Wikipedia.)

For instance, the sideboard shown below, designed in the Anglo-Japanese style by Arthur William Godwin (26 May 1833 – 6 October 1886), cannot be considered  “conventional”. It may reflect Japanese furniture, but it is also consistent with the concept of art for art’s sake, l’art pour l’art, advocated by French poet Théophile Gautier (30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) and shared by certain members of the Aesthetic Movement, such as James Abbott McNeil Whistler. Yet, as noted above, the Anglo-Japanese style is partly rooted in the creed of members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is innovative, Charles Baudelaire‘s “du nouveau,” newness.

Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe?
Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!

(See “Le Voyage” VIII, Les Fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil].)

Sideboard by Arthur Godwin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sideboard by Arthur William Godwin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by British artists William Hunt (2 April 1827 – 7 September 1910), John Everett Millais (8 June 1829 – 13 August 1896) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882). As noted below (see 3), it would not allow any thing [sic] or person “of a commonplace or conventional kind.”

  1. The movement was called brotherhood, which could suggest equality and fraternity, but members of the brotherhood were brothers in that they rejected Sir Joshua Reynolds, (16 July 1723 -23 February 1792), renamed Sir ‘Sloshua’, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts.
  2. Pre-Raphaelites also wished to return to the art preceding the High Renaissance  paintings of Raphael (6 April or 28 March 1483 – 6 April 1520).
  3. Pre-Raphaelites would not allow “anything lax or scamped in the process of painting … and hence … any thing [sic] or person of a commonplace or conventional kind.”[1] (See Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Wikipedia.)
  4. But the group “continued to accept the concepts of history painting, mimesis, imitation of nature as central to the purpose of art.” (See Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Wikipedia.)
  5. The Pre-Raphaelites’ mentor was John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900), the most prominent art critic of the Victorian era who advocated “truth to nature.”
  6. It would be joined by other artists.[2]
    (See Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Wikipedia.)
Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, 1903 (Photo credit: WikiArt)

Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, 1903 (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

The Aesthetic Movement

  • roots in the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
  • roots in the Gothic (William Morris & Edward Burne-Jones)
  • roots in Japonism (Impressionism)

The Aesthetic Movement promoted the concept of art for art’s sake, l’art pour l’art. Consequently, there are affinities between the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Aesthetic Movement. They may differ however in that the Pre-Raphaelites “continued to accept the concepts of history painting, mimesis, imitation of nature as central to the purpose of art.” This could explain why John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) praised the movement (see 5). He advocated “truth to nature”.

For Ruskin “truth to nature” did not seem consistent with the allusive nature of McNeill’s Impressionism. John Ruskin therefore criticized American, but London-based artist James McNeill Whistler stating that Whistler was a “coxcomb” who “asked two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.” (See James Abbott McNeil Whistler, Wikipedia.) Such was John Ruskin’s description of Whistler’s “Nocture in Black and Gold, the Falling Rocket”. Whistler sued and won, but he had to declare bankruptcy and lost the “White House” designed for him by Arthur William Godwin, the cabinet-maker who created the “sideboard” shown above.

Yet if the Pre-Raphaelites are to be linked to another 19th-century British art movement, it would be the art for art’s sake Aesthetic Movement which paralleled, albeit to a lesser extent, the decadence of French poets and artists of the second half of 19th-century. French poets were drinking absinthe, which contained an hallucinogen, thujone. For his part, Dante Gabriel Rossetti took chloral.

Although James McNeill Whistler introduced Dante Gabriel Rossetti to Japonism in 1860, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood is not related to Japonism. It remains however that if the Aesthetic movement could accommodate “Ruskinian Gothic,” not to mention the medievalism of such devotees as William Morris and Sir Edward Burne-Jones, one wonders why it would reject Ruskinian “truth to nature”.

The Gothic

  • William Morris
  • Edward Burne-Jones

Arthur William Godwin‘s “sideboard” is in the Anglo-Japanese style,  which, as is the case with all the movements listed above, is a forerunner of Aestheticism. As an architect-designer, Godwin, who designed the desk displayed above, also drew his inspiration from “Ruskinian Gothic”. Although exotic Japonism helped shape the art of 19th-century Britain, the stained-glass pieces of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (28 August 1833 – 17 June 1898) reached into the Medieval era, as did Arthur William Godwin’s gothic Northampton Guildhall. Morris and Burne-Jones met as students at Oxford and both were attracted to the Middle Ages, or Gothic, praised by John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) who was not only the most prominent art historian and critic of the Victorian era, but also a fine artist.

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Northampton Guildhall, built 1861-64, displays Godwin’s  “Ruskinian Gothic” Style (Photo credit: Flicker)

John Ruskin: The Stones of Venice

John Ruskin is the author of the Stones of Venice, published in three volumes between 1851 and 1853. William Morris was so impressed by a chapter entitled “On the Nature of the Gothic”, that he had it printed separately by Kelmscott Press, the Arts and Crafts press, named after Kelmscott Manor, the Morris family’s country residence. (See Morris and the Kelmscott Press, the Victorian Web.) In 1861, William Morris founded a firm, the Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (See Peter Paul Marschall and Charles Joseph Faulkner, Wikipedia.)

The Peacock room, The Princess from the land of porcelain by William McNeill Whistler (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Peacock room, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain by William McNeill Whistler (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Japonism and the Aesthetic Movement

Whistler was one of the first to appreciate the true significance of the Japanese prints which had begun to appear in the West after Japan’s centuries of isolation ended in the 1850s, and to see that such works, whose subject matter was generally unknown or without much meaning even when it was ascertainable, forced people to think and to see entirely in terms of pictorial qualities, of line and pattern and color; to adapt them as demonstrations of the principle that Reality in painting is intrinsic, not a matter of copying anything outside itself.[3] 

Japonism, however, would characterize the art of American but London-based James McNeill Whistler and American impressionist William Merritt Chase (1 November 1849 – 25 October 1916). Their Japonism is one of subject matter mainly, but exotic subject matter depicted in the rather allusive manner of Impressionism. Both showed blue and white porcelain, fans, screens and ladies wearing kimonos that displayed an oriental motif. “The Blue Kimono,” featured below, is one of the finest paintings created by William Merritt Chase.

The Blue Kimono by William Meritt Chase, 1898 (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

The Blue Kimono by William Merritt Chase, 1898 (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

Cult of Beauty or Symphony in White no 2 (The Little White Girl) by James McNeill Whistler

Cult of Beauty or Symphony in White no 2 (The Little White Girl) by James McNeill Whistler (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whistler and Chase: the Decorative Arts

  • rooms copied
  • studios copied

Ironically, it could be said of both Whistler and Chase that their Japonism was of a decorative nature. The rooms they showed became fashionable and so did the clothes worn by the ladies they portrayed. Whistler’s “Peacock Room” is not altogether consistent with the domestication of the arts advocated by the Arts and Crafts Movement, founded by William Morris. Whistler’s “Peacock Room” is a room, but it borders on art for art’s sake. It was designed in the Anglo-Japanese style and is housed in the Freer Gallery of Art, in Washington D.C..

The Teenth Street Studio by William Merrit Chase http://www.wikiart.org/en/william-merritt-chase/the-tenth-street-studio-1915

The Tenth Street Studio by William Merritt Chase (Photo credit: WikiArt.org)

Conclusion

  • the broadening of the arts
  • the versatility of artists

Anglo-Japanese Style was applied to cabinet-making. However, the 19th-century British art movement we tend to associate with interior design and the decorative arts is the Arts and Crafts Movement, founded by William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896). The Arts and Crafts Movement will be discussed in a separate post, but we have already witnessed a certain domestication of the art and a broadening of the field of art. Henceforth, it will include applied arts and such artists as William Morris and Sir Edward Burne-Jones will be extremely versatile. Whistler, who designed the luxurious “Peacock Room” and sued revered Ruskin, was an interior designer, a painter, and a printmaker.

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

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[1] Timothy Hilton, The Pre-Raphaelites (Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 46.

[2] They would be joined by painters James Collinson and Frederic George Stephens, Rossetti’s brother, poet and critic William Michael Rossetti, and sculptor Thomas Woolner,  Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and John William Waterhouse.

[3]  Alan Gowans, The Restless Art: a History of Painters and Painting 1760-1960 (Philadelphia and New York:  J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966), p. 237.

Nathan Milstein plays Jules Massenet’s Méditation from Thaïs

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© Micheline Walker
19 November 2015
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Word and Art

06 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Art, Children's Literature

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A Mad Tea-Party by Arthur Rackham (Photo credit: Wikimedia.org)

A Mad Tea-Party by Arthur Rackham (Photo credit: Wikipedia.commons)

Japonisme is a French term. It was first used by Jules Claretie (3 December 1840 – 23 December 1913) in L’Art français en 1872 (French Art in 1872) 1913) in L’Art français en 1872 (French Art in 1872). I chose it to describe, in part, the Golden Age of illustration in Britain. The art work that was flooding Europe after Japan’s Sakoku (locked country) period were mere wood-block prints, or ukiyo-e, but no one questioned their beauty. They were in fact not only genuine art, but in many cases, masterpieces.

the Writer and the Illustrator

In Britain, Japonisme ushered in the Golden Age of illustrations. Both word and art could be reproduced very quickly. An author retained the services of an artist, John Tenniel, who, for his part, retained the services of an engraver or engravers. The engravers of  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) are the Brothers Daziel.

Although some artists could illustrate their text, which was the case with Beatrix Potter (28 July 1866 – 22 December 1943), the author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, in most cases, illustrating a book successfully required the collaboration and compatibility of a writer and an artist. The illustrations were then engraved, unless the illustrator was also an engraver.

Peter_Rabbit_first_edition_1902a

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Therefore, when John Tenniel accepted to illustrate Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass (1871), he and Lewis Carroll had long discussions. John Tenniel was accepting his first commission as the illustrator of children’s literature. Until he agreed to illustrate Lewis Carroll’s Alice, John Tenniel had been working as a political cartoonist for Punch magazine. He could draw, but the subject matter was brand new. Consequently, if successful, illustrating Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass could make history. Besides given that Lewis Carroll was a pioneer in the area of official literary nonsense, his task was all the more challenging. What was John Tenniel to do each time the text grew “curiouser and couriouser”?

Literary nonsense

Edward Lear (12 or 13 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) had published his Book of Nonsense, in 1846, a few decades before the Golden Age of Illustration. In particular, he had  popularized limericks, a literary genre, poetry to be precise. Witty literature was not new. It found a rich expression in the Salons of the first half of the 17th century in France and it was, to a certain extent, related to the conceit (la pointe), the witty and ingenious metaphors of the metaphysical poets of 17th-century England. Literary nonsense would become a feature of children’s literature.

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The flowers are beginning their masquerade as people. Sir Jonquil begins the fun by Walter Crane, 1899 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass were very successful and all the more so because children had gained importance. Although the mortality rate among children had not abated drastically, advances in medicine allowed parents to expect their children to survive childhood. Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a Prince consort, and gave birth to nine healthy children who married royals.

Gutenberg continued: the Instantaneous, yet…

Moreover the success of Lewis Carroll‘s and Tenniel’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, word and art, did make history. Johannes Gutenberg‘s invention of the printing-press in the middle of the 15th century had been major revolution, one of the most significant in European history. Well, a book had been produced that included fine reproductions of beautiful images. Printed books containing printed illustrations had been produced between 1500 and 1865 but Japonisme had eased the task.

The Calligrapher & the Artist

Compared to the labour of monks who copied books one at a time, Gutenberg’s invention made printing a text seem instantaneous, hence the revolutionary character of the invention of the printing-press. Let us also consider that the printing-press led to the growth of literacy which, in 19th-century Britain, was being extended to children as children’s literature was popular. However, if an illustrated book were to be a commercial success, producing the book demanded that word and art match in an almost inextricable manner.

What comes to mind is the collaboration between the calligrapher and the artist who illuminated such books as Books of Hours, laicity’s Liber Usualis. The printing-press had been invented but, as noted above, a good relationship between the author and the illustrator was crucial:

“There was a physical relation of the illustrations to the text, intended to subtly mesh illustrations with certain points of the text.” (See John Tenniel, Wikipedia.)

Japonisme

Printing illustrations, however, constituted a more challenging task than printing a text, a challenge that was eased by Japonisme. First, Japonisme allowed the rapid printing of illustrations. Second, it validated the work of illustrators. But third, it also simplified the duplication of illustrations.

Typically, the art of Japan featured:

  • a diagonal line crossing a vertical or horizontal line;
  • flat or lightly shaded colours;
  • a stark outline;
  • &c

Composition did not ease a printer’s labour, but flat colours and a stark outline, i.e. the linearity of Japanese wood-block prints, did help the illustrator and the printer. So did the use of flat colours.

Rackham’s work is often described as a fusion of a northern European ‘Nordic’ style strongly influenced by the Japanese woodblock tradition of the early 19th century. (See Arthur Rackham, Wikipedia.)

Rackham’s “Mad Tea-Party”, featured above, exhibits a diagonal line and it is a linear work of art. The colours are poured inside lines, which reminds me of colouring books for children. But note that there are few shadows. The cups and saucer do not cast a shadow, nor does the teapot. As for dimensionality, it is expressed through the use of lines rather than a juxtaposition of shades of the same colour or the juxtaposition of different colours. Wood-block printing allowed for a measure of dimensionality through the use of lighter or darker tones of a colour or colours. However, by and large, Japanese wood-block prints do not show the shadow of the objects they depict.

With respect to linearity, one need only compare Katsushika Hokusai‘s (c. 31 October 1760 – 10 May 1849) “Self-Portrait” and Rackham’s illustration of the “Town mouse and Country mouse”, shown in a previous post. Moreover, draping or dimensionality is achieved by using less lines (pale: close) or more lines (dark: distant).

Hokusai

Self-Portrait by Hokusai (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Town mouse and Country Mouse by Arthur Rackham (Wikimedia.org)

Town Mouse and Country Mouse by Arthur Rackham (Photo credit: Wikimedia.org)

Conclusion

Arthur Rackham’s illustrations are close to ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”). Walter Crane, however, is the most prolific among Japoniste illustrators of children’s books. He illustrated a very large number of literary works. We are acquainted with his Baby’s Own Æsop (Gutenberg [EBook #25433]), but he also illustrated The Baby’s Own Opera (Gutenberg [EBook #25418]), songs for children. Folklorists, however, had collected and classified a very large number of folk tales.

Illustrators had countless tales to illustrate: those produced by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Perrault, Madame d’Aulnoy. Anyone can rewrite the “Little Red Riding Hood” and illustrate it. Carl Larsson illustrated the “Little Red Riding Hood” in 1881. The Arts and Crafts movement was international. (to be cont’d)

I apologize for the delay. My computer is nearly dead and life has a way of making demands.

With my kindest regards. ♥

The Little Red Riding Hood by Carl Larsson

The Little Red Riding Hood by Carl Larsson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Japanese Artists

Japonisme in France & Britain

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Sources and Resources

“Alice in Wonderland” Tim Burton 2010 by Danny Elfman
Jane Burden Morris

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6 November 2015
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The Golden Age of Illustration in Britain

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Art, England, Illustrations

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Alice in Wonderland by Arthur Rackham

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Arthur Rackham (Photo credit: Wikimedia.org)

The Golden Age of Illustration

Browsing through Women Painters of the World, from the time of Caterina Vigri, 1413–1463, to Rosa Bonheur and the present day, Walter Shaw Sparrow‘s selection of paintings by women and associated articles (1862 – 1940), I found works by Kate Greenaway and remembered the diversity Japonism had introduced in European art. Japonism swept Europe. It influenced Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt, and numerous other artists. But is also led to the Golden Age of illustration in Britain, the age of Walter Crane (1845-1895), Randolph Caldecott, Sir John Tenniel (1820-1914), Arthur Rackham (1867-1939), Beatrix Potter…

For the moment, however, we will glimpse the art of British artists, some of whom had been or were members of the Arts and Crafts movement (1890 – 1920) or had benefited from the broadening of objects and styles considered artistic introduced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, founded in 1848. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood conferred acceptability to areas of the visual arts that had seemed marginal in earlier years, such as history painting and the illustration of books, children’s literature especially, and artwork that was reproduced, or prints.

Such movements broke with the constraints of academic painting and introduced a democratization of art. The “beautiful” could be found in a piece of textile or wallpaper, the decoration of a room, or to put it in a nutshell: design. Given the breadth of this subject, I will show art by Walter Crane, Arthur Rackham and Sir John Tenniel. This particular post is an illustrated introduction.

Tenniel, White Rabbit, dresses as herald, blowing trumpet (37)
Tenniel, White Rabbit checking watch (2)
C.59.g.11 97 detail Courtesy of The British Library

A Mad Tea-Party, Alice in Wonderland by Sir John Tenniel (25)
(Courtesy of The British Library)

By clicking on British children’s literature illustrators, you will find a list of illustrators of children’s literature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_19th-century_British_children%27s_literature_illustrators
They are also listed at the foot of this post.

Town mouse and country mouse by Arthur Rackham

Town mouse and country mouse by Arthur Rackham (Photo credit: Google Images)

Centuries of Childhood

  • acceptance of childhood
  • moralistic literature
  • oral tradition

As it flourished, the illustration of children’s literature reflected a major transformation. Childhood was not born until recently, which can be explained, at least in part, by the high mortality rate among children. Too few reached adulthood. Besides, children’s literature had been put into the service of education. It was didactic and moralistic, or so people thought. (See Philippe Ariès and Centuries of Childhood, Wikipedia.) It was as though children were born tainted with the original sin, a condition baptism did not correct fully.

In literature, Æsopic fables flourished long before Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit). There are several illustrators of Æsopic fables who are also, to a large extent, illustrators of Jean de La Fontaine. Jean de La Fontaine retold a large number of Æsopic fables that had been taken away from the realm of oral tradition beginning with Latin author Phædrus (1st century CE) and Greek author Babrius (2nd century CE). (See Phædrus [fabulist], Wikipedia.) These were supposedly didactic, but the Horatian ideal, to inform and to delight, was not always served. Children were delighted and did not necessarily identify with the careless behaviour of a mere grasshopper. The tale was not about the behaviour of children; it was about the behaviour of a grasshopper. Children knew the difference.

Japonism

  • the Sakoku (locked country) period
  • incunabula
  • art reproduced: prints

Illustrations have solid roots in Western culture. Jean de France, duc de Berry paid a fortune for his illustrated Très Riches Heures. But it could well be that Japonism triggered the British Golden Age of illustration and its large European counterpart. Japan had isolated itself in the 17th century (1633–39). No one could enter or leave Japan under penalty of death. That period of Japan’s history is called the Sakoku period, which ended in 1853 with the forcible entry of the Black Ships of Commodore Matthew Perry.

However, as of 1860, Europe was flooded with Japanese prints. As prints, these were not the unique works of art Europeans created (beginning with the 8th-century Book of Kells). After the invention the printing press, certain books were still illuminated by hand. But, as of 1501, printers no longer left room on a page for an illustrator to illuminate a printed text. The hand-painted printed books produced during the period that spans the invention of printing and the demise of hand-painted books are called incunabula (les incunables).

Contrary to Europeans, the Japanese printed their artwork and these were considered by Europeans to be genuine artwork, despite duplication. Even Vincent van Gogh could afford a Japanese print of which he liked both the style and the subject matter. He did not learn a printing technique, but Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Mary Cassatt did. Art had become affordable and it spread to design, to use a broad term. Moreover, certain artists’ Japonism consisted in including the objects of the Orient in their paintings: white and blue porcelain, fans, screens… Many artists also liked the beau idéal Japan proposed.

Ironically, appreciation of Japan’s beau idéal contributed to the emergence of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and, eventually, modernism. Art Nouveau flourished during the golden years of illustration. However, the most significant element Japonism brought to European art was an acceptance of art reproduced: prints.

Japanese artists reproduced their art, called ukiyo-e, using wood block printing. Consequently, they did not adhere to the notion that a work of art should be unique and original. Apprenticeship consisted in attempting to master the art of one’s master. For Japanese artists, beauty was not a matter of taste. They supported the concept of a beau idéal, which meant that, in their eyes, beauty was one of a kind, but not the artwork.

Prints

It is in this respect, the acceptability of prints, that Japonism paved the way for the golden age of illustrations (see Illustration, Wikipedia). Many of us do purchase original art, but a reproduction can provide the same pleasure as the original. Such is the case of my beloved Child Händel. It is an inexpensive copy of a painting by Margaret Isabel Dicksee, but I like it. So did Walter Shaw Sparrow and Ralph Peacock who either compiled, the former, or, the latter, wrote a chapter of Women Painters of the World (Gutenberg [EBook #39000]).

As it happens, a poster by Toulouse-Lautrec may cost millions. Several copies were made, but few are available and the art of Toulouse-Lautrec is considered beautiful by a large number of art lovers. Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, there is a significant degree of unanimity with respect to the beauty of certain works of art.

Early Illustrators

Jean de La Fontaine‘s Fables were illustrated from the moment they proved successful. As well, given that many were rewritings of Æsopic fables, the stories they told had the merit of being familiar. La Fontaine had several illustrators, the most famous of whom is Gustave Doré. But Doré’s illustrations are monochrome. Wood engravings and etchings, an intaglio technique, may be coloured, but prints are often monochrome art. (See Wood engraving and Etching, Wikipedia.)

Pioneers of “copied” art are John Leech (Punch), George Cruikshank (illustrator &c), Hablot Knight Browne (Dickens‘ illustrator), Honoré Daumier (French caricaturist), George du Maurier (cartoonist) and others.

However, we are beginning with John Tenniel, Arthur Rackham and Walter Crane. Walter Crane illustrated The Baby’s own Æsop. (See Gutenberg [EBook #25433] and Laura Gibbs’ mythfolklore.net.aesopica). Early illustrations were not coloured. Gustave Doré‘s, illustration of La Fontaine are monochrome pieces. Prints, such as the oriental prints that flooded Europe after the Sakoku period, could be coloured, in which they differed substantially from monochrome prints. Both Arthur Rackham and Sir John Tenniel produced monochrome as well as coloured illustrations and both illustrated Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

They and Walter Crane are our artists, as space and the nature of weblogs do not allow me to feature Beatrix Potter—who illustrated the books she wrote, the Peter Rabbit stories, Kate Greenaway, and others. All are listed at the foot of this post. Pictures can be found by clicking on the name of the artist. Their work may also be seen at Wikimedia.org. Write the name of the artist and specify Wikimedia.org. However, the art of other illustrators may be shown in future posts. 

Walter Crane was influenced by Japanese colour-prints (see Walter Crane, Wikipedia). As for Sir John Tenniel, he drew his illustrations which were then engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. (See Sir John Tenniel, Wikipedia.) Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland are a Gutenberg [EBook #114] publication.

Sir John Tenniel engaged in nonsense art and Lewis Carroll, in literary nonsense, but Carroll did not write limericks. Nonsense is an umbrella term and, although limericks can be used in children’s literature, they may be not suitable for children. Unlike Walter Crane’s The Baby’s own Æsop, “Hercules and the Waggoner” a fable by Æsop and La Fontaine, and Rudyard Kipling’s “Small boy of Quebec,” which is witty and delightfully naïve, limericks may be crude. But Walter Crane produced Toy Books inspired by Japanese art.

crane_toybook

Toy Book by Walter Crane (Gutenberg [EBook #25433])

 

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The Little Red Riding Hood by Walter Crane (Gutenberg [EBook #19993])

Conclusion

I must close this very incomplete post, but we have seen a significant expansion of the areas that could be considered legitimate art, from illustrations to design. Japonism played a role in this expansion and it also played a role in a democratization of art as did the Arts and Crafts movement.

As we know from previous posts, French artist Bernard Boutet de Monvel earned a handsome living as an etcher and designing interiors. So did Coco Chanel, designing clothes…

With kindest regards to all of you. ♥

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Sources and Resources

  • Walter Crane, The Baby’s Own Aesop (Gutenberg [EBook #25433])
  • Mabie, Hale & Forbush, Childhood’s Favorites and Fairy Stories (Gutenberg [EBook #19993])
  • Sir John Tenniel, Illustrations for Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Gutenberg [EBook #114])
  • Women Painters of the World (Gutenberg [EBook #39000])

List of British illustrators (Golden Age)

Lewis Carroll‘s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
(music: “Lake Louise” composed by Japanese pianist Kuhki Kuramoto) 

Alice in Wonderland by Arthur Rackham

© Micheline Walker
30 October 2015
revised 31 October 2015
WordPress

Mary Cassatt: an Intimate Japonisme

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Art, Japonisme

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the-childs-bathThe Child’s Bath, by Mary Cassatt, 1893  (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

 
Part of this post is borrowed from an earlier post that featured Mary Cassatt (22 May 1844 – 14 June 1926). At the time I wrote my earlier post, we had not discussed the influence of Japanese art on Western artists. However, we have now opened that door by showing how Japonism had an impact on the art of Toulouse-Lautrec. But Japonism also influenced other artists, one of whom is Mary Cassatt. 
 
 

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Nude Child, aquatint, drypoint, 1890-1891 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
Mother’s Kiss, drypoint, etching, 1891-1891 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings) 
The Visit,  aquatint, drypoint, 1890-1891 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
The Lamp, aquatint, drypoint, etching, 1891 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)

Two Forms of Japonisme

Japonism left its imprint in many ways, but we will focus on two ways: subject matter and style. James Abbott McNeill Whistler (11 July 1834 – 17 July 1903) and William Merritt Chase (1 November 1849 – 25 October 1916) featured an oriental subject matter: kimonos, blue and white porcelain, folding screens, fans, etc. As for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, his “Japonisme” was, to a large extent, a matter of composition. Theretofore, artists had usually arranged their subject matter using the Greek “Golden Section.” (See Golden ratio, Wikipedia.) Without stating that beauty is an absolute, the Greeks had noticed that an artwork was considered more beautiful by a large number of people if a certain template was used. This template is the Golden Section, which looks like an off-centre crucifix and it does indeed characterize the composition of a large number of drawings, prints and paintings.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Given that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a trained artist, I would presume he was familiar with the Golden Section. However, in Lautrec’s works, one of the two intersecting lines of the Golden Section, is a diagonal line, which is a departure from the usual vertical line intersecting an horizontal line. That is a feature of Japonism.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec‘s Japonisme was therefore expressed in his compositional technique. As for colour, it is a flat colour, which is consistent with printmaking. If one looks at the dress worn by May Belfort in Jardin de Paris, May Belfort (1883; Art Nouveau) (please click on the link to see the artwork), one notices that May’s dress is evenly red. Lautrec rendered dimensionality by using lines, which is also a feature of Japonisme. His Moulin Rouge, La Goulue with her Sister (1892; Art Nouveau) is an example of linearity. There is a line on one side of La Goulue’s dress. Which takes us to Mary Cassatt.

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The Coiffure Study, drypoint, 1890-1891 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
The Bath, 1890-1891 (Photo credit: Wikipaintings) 
  

Mary Cassatt’s Japonisme

Mary Cassatt (22 May 1844 – 14 June 1926) was an American artist of French descent born to an upper-middle-class family in what was becoming Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was educated in the United States and various European countries: Spain, Italy and Holland. However, although she began studying the fine arts in the United States, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, it would not be long before she moved to Paris and became a permanent “expat.” She did so in 1871, but returned to the United States almost immediately, the Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871) having erupted.

Mary Cassat’s Japonisme shows affinities with that of Toulouse-Lautrec in that it is our second type of Japonism, Japonism revealed in the manner an artist creates his or her work rather than in his or her choice of subject matter. From the point of view of composition, the art of Mary Cassatt resembles that of Lautrec. We have an off-centre Golden Section and one of the intersecting lines is a diagonal line, a discreet diagonal line.

Moreover, her colours are flat colours whose dimensionality is expressed mostly through the use of lines. The art of Mary Cassatt is otherwise unrelated to that of Toulouse-Lautrec. Mary Cassatt did not make posters showing the Moulin Rouge and can-can dancers. Moreover, compared with Toulouse-Lautrec, her colours are subdued.

Although I have stated that Mary Cassatt’s subject matter was not Oriental, she sometimes featured a woman holding a fan.  However, her main subject matter are the Madonna and Child of the Renaissance, women and genre painting, depictions of people going about their daily activities. Genre painting was introduced by artists of the Dutch Golden Age and is a characteristic of Japanese meisho “famous places” prints, but in a context so different from Western art as to be a negligible similarity.

The Paris Japanese Arts Exhibition of 1890

Mary visited the Paris Japanese Arts Exhibition of 1890 and so loved the works she saw that she devoted the following year to making prints. She had an admirer and close friend in Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917). He was impressed with her work and encouraged her to show it at Impressionist exhibits, which she did eventually. Degas, whose pastels she loved, taught her how to make etchings. To this day, artists often learn to make prints as several copies of their art are produced which makes their artwork more affordable. But, in the case of Mary Cassatt’s work, learning to make etchings benefitted her Japonism probably more than it benefitted her clients. She could and did produce prints that may well be our best example of Japonisme.

According to Germaine Greer, “[t]he exhibition of Japanese art at the Palais des Beaux-Arts had revealed [to Mary Cassatt] the lightness and grace of the alternative aesthetic, beside which the pompous works of recognized artists seemed all the more laboured, explicit, heavy and lustreless.”[i] Mary was so impressed by the prints she saw and studied that she devoted the year 1891 to making prints, working in drypoint. Having traced her drawing on copper, as is the practice in etchings, she “laid in a soft ground over the part that she wished to colour and applied the colours all at once, by a technique that she called ‘à la poupée’  (doll-like), working with rags tied over little sticks. She and her printer then ran the plates by hand through the press.” (Greer, p. 112).

These prints were shown and Mary’s friend Degas was astonished: “I will not admit that a woman will draw so well.” Using the technique she devised, artist Mary Cassatt drew lines and put in a flat colour, in which her art resembles that of Toulouse-Lautrec. Moreover, from the point of view of composition, Mary also used Lautrec’s diagonal lines, albeit discreetly. Grace permeates not only the prints created in 1990-1991, but it also does all of her paintings.

For instance, although the work featured at the top of this post is not a print, we can observe readily the influence of Japanese woodblock printing and, more precisely, that of ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world,” prints. As is the case with Toulouse-Lautrec’s prints, Mary’s prints are linear and the colour, mainly flat. However, to return to the painting featured at the top of this post, the manner in which artist Mary  Cassatt depicted the lady’s hair reflects Western art. The lady’s hair is not a flat black, but her hairdo shows Japonism. This Japonism is one of subject matter, our first form of Japonism, but marginally.

Germaine Greer writes that, “[Mary Cassatt’s] designs are as deceptively simple and self-effacing as a haiku.” (Greer, p. 112). A haiku is a very short Japanese poem, usually 17 on in three phrases of 5, 7 and 5 on respectively. Such poetry expresses an “essence,” and can therefore be associated with Impressionism, or an attempt to capture the evanescent moment when light touches and molds the subject, giving it constant newness. (See Impressionism, Wikipedia.)

Biographical Notes

In nineteenth-century France, women were denied access to the Paris École des Beaux-Arts, not to mention the right to vote, a cause Mary Cassatt would embrace especially in her later years, when cataracts all but blinded her. Therefore, given the exclusion of women from the Paris École des Beaux-Arts, Mary Cassatt studied privately under academicist Jean-Léon Gérôme.

Toward the end of 1866, Mary also joined a painting class taught by Charles Chaplin, a noted genre artist. As well, in 1868, Cassatt studied with artist Thomas Couture and showed A Mandoline Player (please click on the title to see the artwork), dated 1872 in Wikipaintings, at the Paris Salon of 1868. Cassatt’s Two Women Throwing Flowers During Carnival was also exhibited and purchased at the Paris Salon of 1872.

The above were “realist” works that showed the influence of Gustave Courbet (10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877). However, as of 1877, Cassatt’s work would no longer be accepted by the Paris Salon. At Degas’s request, Mary therefore showed eleven of her works at the Impressionist exhibit of 1879. She then joined the Impressionists in shows that took place in 1880, 1881, and 1886.[ii] Yet, Mary Cassatt’s Japoniste prints and paintings cannot be associated with Impressionism, except by date. Let us say that Cassatt had a Japoniste period.

As mentioned earlier, once she returned to France, via Italy,[iii] in 1874, Cassatt also received guidance from painter, printmaker, and sculptor. Edgar Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917). Moreover, she was inspired by the art of Camille Pissarro (10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903). Degas and Pissarro were forerunners of Impressionism. As do many apprentices, Mary went to the Louvre on a daily basis and copied the masters. These visits to the Louvre also allowed her to meet other artists.

The Madonna and Child: Feminity and Motherliness

Mary decided not to marry. She felt she could not combine the duties of a wife and mother and the demands of a career as artist. However, as I have noted, her artwork are depictions of the Madonna and Child, particularly as of 1890. So there is femininity and motherliness in her art. Mary Cassatt also painted children and women and did genre work, depictions of domesticity. The Visit (please click on the title to see the artwork) and The Lamp, prints shown above, are examples of her genre painting. So are The Coiffure Study and The Bath. Intimacy pervades Cassatt’s art. This art cannot be associated with Impressionism, except by date.

Post-Impressionism, Fauvism (Henri Matisse) and Cubism (Georges Braque, Picasso, etc.), movements that followed Impressionism, were not to Mary’s liking. Besides, she developed various health problems, including cataracts. She continued to paint despite poor eyesight and, according to Wikipedia, “she took up the cause of women’s suffrage and, in 1915, she showed eighteen works in an exhibition supporting the movement.” She died eleven years later, on 14 June 1926, at Château de Beaufresne.

Mary Cassatt’s Japonisme, an intimate, feminine and motherly Japonisme, reached excellence as did most of her work. She was a fine artist who earned the of her peers. In 1894, she was described by Gustave Geffroy as one of “les trois grandes dames” of Impressionism along with  Marie    Bracquemond and Berthe Morisot. Very few women are ever called “grandes dames.” (See Mary Cassatt, Wikipedia.)

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[i] Germaine Greer, The Obstacle Race, The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1979), p. 112.

[ii] “Mary Cassatt”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 15 Jul. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/98098/Mary-Cassatt>.

[iii] She was commissioned by the Archbishop of Pittsburgh to paint two copies of paintings by Correggio in Parma, Italy.

the-bath

 
© Micheline Walker
15 July 2013
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The Bath, n.d.
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 

 

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: the Can-can

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Art, Music

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La Troupe de Mlle Églantine, by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

(Please click on the smaller images to enlarge them.)

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Jane Avril, (n.d.)
Polaire, drawing (n.d.)
May Belfort, Jardin de Paris, poster (1883)
La Goulue and her sister at the Moulin Rouge, 1892
  

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Le Moulin Rouge

Cheret, Lautrec, Picasso, Cappiello, Mucha and Steinlen are the names of poster artists whose craft reached a climax in the late nineteenth-century, as French academicism declined.

The Golden Age of Posters

The Golden Age of posters was France’s Belle Époque (1871-1914) and fin de siècle (turn of the century).  Picasso’s posters are seldom discussed, but posters created by Toulouse-Lautrec, Mucha and Steinlen have remained popular, and only the very wealthy can purchase a poster, or other artwork, by Toulouse-Lautrec.  As a genre, posters were influenced by Japonisme, hence the timing of this post.

Biographical notes: a Crippling Illness

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901; aged 36) was born to a distinguished aristocratic family, in the château du Bosc near Albi.  However, he developed a disproportionate body after breaking one thigh bone, the right, at the age of 13, and a second thigh bone, the left, the following year.  These misfortunes triggered a disease, possibly pycnodysostosis, that caused the broken bones not to heal properly and stopped the growth of Toulouse-Lautrec’s legs.  When he reached adulthood, he was 1.54 m (5 ft 1 in) tall, but his legs measured only 0.70 m (27.5 in).  It was an affliction he resented.

However, Toulouse-Lautrec, a printmaker, a draughtsman and illustrator, loved his art (Post-Impressionism and Art Nouveau) and left for posterity masterfully composed posters, one of his great strengths as an artist.  Some of his posters featured the highly paid can-can dancers of his time: “La Goulue” (1866–1929) and Jane Avril (1868–1943).  When the Moulin Rouge (literally: the red mill) opened,[i] on 6 October 1889, Lautrec was asked to create several posters, all of which helped make the Moulin Rouge famous.  Eventually, the posters that earned him his very own table at the Moulin Rouge, made their creator as famous as the Moulin Rouge.

Influences: Japonisme, Manet and Degas

Toulouse-Lautrec’s artwork shows “flat areas of strong colours” (see Japonism, Wikipedia), as do Japanese prints, except that Toulouse-Lautrec used very strong colours.  As for masterful composition, it was also a characteristic of Japonisme, as was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s linear style.  Posters were an ideal art form because they were drawn and coloured quickly, which lent spontaneity to the genre.  Other than Japonism, Toulouse-Lautrec’s art was influenced by Manet (23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) and Degas (19 July 1834 – 27 September 1917).

Le-Goulue-and-Valentin,-the-'Boneless-One'-large 
La Goulue and Valentin, the ‘Boneless One’ (n.d.)
(Please click on this image to enlarge it.)
 

Can-Can

As for can-can (cancanner means to quack) as a dance, it developed in 1830, but was originally a quadrille, a dance performed by two couples, two female and two male dancers, who formed a rectangle.  By 1889, however, it was danced by one female dancer and called chahut (noisy uproar).  It then evolved into a chorus line of female dancers who performed synchronized high kicks, split jumps (le grand écart), an element of dance, gymnastics and figure-skating that has always fascinated the public.  Can-can dancers also “stirred” an uplifted leg, a movement called the rond de jambe (tracing a circle with a leg), and executed “port d’armes” (carrying weapons) “turning on one leg, while grasping the other leg by the ankle” (see Can-can, Wikipedia).

Occasionally, dancer(s) turned their back to the public, bent down, lifted their skirts and petticoats, and showed their drawers. This amused spectators and was an erotic movement. “La Goulue” (literally: the glutton) was fond of this little routine. The bottom of her drawers showed a heart, to everyone’s delight.  Can-can dancers wore black stockings, an element of their accoutrements Toulouse-Lautrec used, very successfully, as a compositional device.

(Please click on this image to enlarge it.)
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Couverture de L’Estampe originale (cover of L’Estampe [print] originale) (n.d.) 
Salon, rue des Moulins, 1894 (brothel)
 

La Fin

As Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) wrote, “[l]e dernier acte est sanglant, quelque belle que soit la comédie en tout le reste.”  (The final act is bloody, however beautiful the entire rest of the comedy.)  In Lautrec’s case, most acts were bloody.  He became an alcoholic and often shared the lodgings of prostitutes, lesbian prostitutes in particular, and caught syphilis.  Just before his death, he spent some time in a sanatorium.  He was buried at Verdelais, a few kilometers from Malromé, the family estate.

Toulouse-Lautrec died at the early age of thirty-six, in Malromé, having created “737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works.”  (See Toulouse-Lautrec, Wikipedia).  Some of his paintings, portraits of Carmen Gaudin mainly, his model for The Laundress (1888), were executed in the garden of Monsieur Forest, le père Forest, in Montmartre.  This was Toulouse-Lautrec’s plein-air period.

German-born French composer Jacques Offenbach‘s (20 June 1819 – 5 October 1880) Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers), features a musical piece entitled Galop infernal,[ii] associated with can-can.  Offenbach, a native of Cologne, was a cello virtuoso.

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[i] The Moulin Rouge was co-founded in 1889 by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller.  
[ii] The dance was first designated as “galop” (fast running horses), but when the Moulin Rouge opened, it was called “le chahut” (noisy and boisterous).

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© Micheline Walker
10 July 2013
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The Laundress,
a portrait of Carmen Gaudin, painted in Monsieur Forest’s garden in Montmartre,
c. 1888
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 
Jacques Offenbach‘s can-can music (from: “Orphée aux Enfers”)
Portrait de Toulouse-Lautrec par lui-même (self-portrait)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
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Manet, “Japonisme” and Modernism

08 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Art, Japonism

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640px-Hokusai_portraitKatsushika Hokusai, in an 1839 self-portrait (Photo credit: Hokusai, Wikipedia)

As of Édouard Manet’s “modernity,” there occurred a gradual decline of academic art. The nude women of Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) did not quite belong. Symbolism had therefore entered the visual arts. At first glance, this painting seemed a “realist” work, consistent with Gustave Courbet‘s art, but it wasn’t. The academicists, Alexandre Cabanel and William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who excluded it from the Salon of 1863, the regular exhibition of Paris’ École des Beaux-Arts, must have sensed what Victor Hugo had sensed when he first read Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal, (The Flowers of Evil.) Hugo called Baudelaire’s collection of poems a ‘nouveau frisson’ (a new shudder, a new thrill)[i] in literature. (See Les Fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil], Wikipedia.)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler‘s “Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl ” was also rejected by academicists. Whistler was introducing impressionism and Japonism, which, Whistler’s case, would be called the Anglo-Japanese style. After leaving the United States, Whistler spent some time in France, but soon settled in England.

Both Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe and Whistler’s Symphony in White were “different,” so both were shown at the 1863 Salon des Refusés.[ii]  Émile Zola stated that “[b] eauty [was] no longer an absolute, a preposterous universal standard,”[iii] and, in 1886, he published L’Œuvre (The Masterpiece), a novel inspired by the rejection of Manet’s “Masterpiece.” That same year, Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto.

Our Japanese artists are:

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View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, published posthumously (1859)

Sukiyagahsi in the Eastern Capital, from “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” Utagawa Hiroshige, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
 
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)
 

Modernisme

Manet’s inclusion in a painting such as the deceitfully realist Déjeuner sur l’herbe of elements that did not seem to belong and did not belong, and Japonisme contributed to the ultimate acceptance of different styles, a multitude of “isms.” How else could Art Nouveau, Post-Impressionism (Van Gogh),[iv] Cubism (Picasso), Intimism,  (Modernism  [EN]), etc.have emerged? The unexpectedly enigmatic art of Manet and Japonism ushered in the degree of acceptance that characterizes modernism. In fact, Japonism was a tidal wave.

By the same token, there occurred an equally unexpected integration of various arts and crafts: musical, visual, etc. There was collaboration between stage decorators, composers, literary figures and various “artists.” Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russes employed major artists, including Pablo Picasso. Russian painter Léon Bakst was the Ballets Russes’ stage- and costume designer. Sergei Diaghilev also employed soon-to-be major composers: Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Igor Stravinsky, etc. (For lists of artists and musicians who worked for Diaghilev, see Ballets Russes, Wikipedia.)

In other words, although there had to be exceptions, beginning with Manet and Japonisme, the world of art broadened. Modernism, starting with Impressionism, inaugurated greater diversity. A list may be useful.

In other words, as I wrote at the beginning of this post, rule-governed academic art simply faded out. But there’s more…

“Views,” or the Japanese Hours

As well, some Japanese prints depicted “hours” of the day. In traditional Japan, hours had been associated with an animal. There were twelve hours: the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon, the Serpent, the Horse, the Sheep, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog and the Boar. (See Horloge japonaise traditionnelle, Wikipedia.) These prints reminded me of Benedict’s Canonical Hours. “Hours,” or equivalent observances, existed before Western monasticism. They in fact still exist, not only in Western culture, but also in other cultures and religions, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Janeism. (See Monasticism, Wikipedia.)

As for “Views” or “Famous Places” (meisho), they sometimes resemble genre art, or art portraying persons going about their daily activities. Hokusai‘s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fugi and Hiroshige‘s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, both meisho (“famous places”) pieces, bring to mind the miniatures of Jean de France’s Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illuminated by the Limbourg brothers and showing the labours of the months. Hiroshige’s series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is divided into seasons, which takes us back to the calendar, no banal invention.

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HOKUSA~1
 

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Sarumaru Dayu, from the ‘Hyakunin Isshu Ubaga Etoki’
A Netsuke Worshop, from the ‘Hyakunin Isshu Ubaga Etoki’
Katsushika Hokusai
(Photo credit: Hokusai Wikipedia and Hokusai, The Complete Works)
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)

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[i] Wikipedia (Manet) contains a fuller commentary.

[ii] “Frissonner” means to shiver.

[iii] There were other Salons des Refusés (1874, 1875, and 1886) but it did not become an annual exhibition. The 1863 Salon des refusés was decreed by Napoléon III. (See Salon des Refusés, Wikipedia)

[iv] According to Wikipedia, the “term [Post-Impressionism] was coined by British artist and art critic Roger Fry, in 1910, to describe the development of French art since Manet.”

Manet’s “Déjeuner sur l’herbe” (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863
(Photo credit: Déjeuner sur l’herbe, Wikipedia)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 758PX-~1 
   
© Micheline Walker
8 July 2013
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Katsushika Hokusai: Beauty

30 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by in Art, Japonisme

≈ 9 Comments

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Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa2

The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai, 1832 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Related Post: Utamaro’s Women & Japonisme
 

Beginning in the 1850s, the influence of Japonism on European art in general and French art in particular was pervasive. In my last post, I named three artists: Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige. All three were ukiyo-e painters of the Edo period. But there were other ukiyo-e painters and it is still possible to purchase Japanese estampes. Prints belonging to original series executed by our three artists and other masters are very expensive. However, affordable prints are available. Moreover one need not be ashamed of hanging a reproduction on a wall in one’s home.

Katsushika Hokusai

In this post, I will simply discuss beauty: its relativity and mankind’s ability to see beauty in the unfamiliar. However, I will not do so in any depth.

At the top of our post, is a very famous print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It is the first in a series of thirty-six prints constituting Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1823-1829). One may see all thirty-six views by clicking on the title of the series: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Umegawa in Sagami Province,
The Kazusa Province sea route
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)
 
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 800px-The_Kazusa_sea_route

Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji

Not only did Hokusai make a series of thirty-six prints depicting various views of Mount Fuji, but he went on to make a hundred: One-hundred Views of Mount Fuji (1834). Hokusai demonstrated that depending on the direction from which Mount Fuji was drawn, not to mention the weather and the season, depictions of its reality varied. To the Impressionists, this was grist to the mill as they were fascinated by the manner in which light kept reshaping reality.

The more important factor, however, was the popularity of an art that differed from Western art. As soon as they reached Europe, the Japanese prints were considered beautiful by artists such as Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and, later, Vincent van Gogh. Claude Monet purchased as many prints as he could. This degree of enthusiasm attested to the fact that, even otherwise expressed, “reality” could be beautiful and that it could be beautiful to several individuals.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Given the popularity of The Great Wave off Kanagawa, one could presume that beauty is an absolute. This cannot be the case, at least not altogether. What Europeans saw as beautiful was not the beauty their academicists rewarded, but an exotic form of beauty and, in the case of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the beauty of one print in particular: The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

The popularity of The Great Wave showed not only that many individuals could agree on what was and was not beautiful, but that many individuals could also agree that art rooted in an oriental form of aesthetics was beautiful. However, despite a consensus regarding the beauty of The Great Wave off Kanagawa, I doubt very much that its popularity suggested that beauty was an absolute.   

Quotations

Allow me to quote one of my former professors who writes that, in 1874, a group of painters working in Paris formed a “loose association” and put on an exhibition under the title of “The Anonymous Society of Painters and Sculptors.” Critics were in attendance:

“To describe what they saw there, critics coined a new word—Impressionism. It was no compliment, however. As one of them put it: We have seen an exhibition by the Impressionalists . . . M. Manet is among those who maintain that in painting one can and ought to be satisfied with the impression.  . . .[They] appear to have declared war on beauty.”[i]

Émile Zola spoke for the Impressionists when he declared flatly that,

“. . . Beauty is no longer an absolute, a preposterous universal standard. Beauty is identical with itself. . . . Beauty lives within us, not outside us. What do I care for philosophical abstraction, for an ideal perfection conjured up by a small group of men! What interests me as a man is mankind, the source of my life.”[ii]

Woman looking in Mirror (Artinthepicture.com)
Woman (hellaheaven-ana.blogsp)
Woman profile (Wikipaintings)

mirrorHokusai1

woman-profile

Conclusion

One particularly “avid” collector of Japanese prints was Frank Lloyd Wright.  In fact, Wright also sold ukiyo-e woodblock prints. (See Frank Lloyd Wright, Wikipedia.)

However, I will close this post by quoting Van Gogh. (See Japonaiserie [Van Gogh], Wikipedia.)

“In a letter to Theo dated about 5 June 1888 Vincent remarks

About staying in the south, even if it’s more expensive — Look, we love Japanese painting, we’ve experienced its influence — all the Impressionists have that in common — [so why not go to Japan], in other words, to what is the equivalent of Japan, the south? So I believe that the future of the new art still lies in the south after all.” 
_________________________
[i] G. H. Hamilton, Manet and His Critics (New Haven, 1954), p. 92. Quoted in Alan Gowans, The Restless Art, A History of Painters and Painting, 1760-1960 (J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966), p. 181.
[ii] Alan Gowans, loc. cit.
 

800px-Hokusai_1760-1849_Ocean_waves

Ocean Waves 
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
 
© Micheline Walker
30 June 2013 
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“Lullaby From Itsuki Village” (Itsuki no Komoriuta)
Toshiko Yonekawa 

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Utamaro’s Women & Japonisme

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Art, Japonisme

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Amour déclaré398px-L'amour_profondément_caché,_par_Utamaro

Kitagawa_Utamaro_-_Toji_san_bijin_(Three_Beauties_of_the_Present_Day)From_Bijin-ga_(Pictures_of_Beautiful_Women),_published_by_Tsutaya_Juzaburo_-_Google_Art_Project394px-Ase_o_fuku_onna
 
Amour déclaré (Love Revealed) (Photo credit: Wikipaintings)
Amour profondément caché (Love Profoundly Concealed) (Photo credit: Wikimedia)
Trois beautés de notre temps (Three Beauties) (Photo credit: Utamaro [FR], Utamaro [EN], Wikipedia)
Woman Wiping Sweat from her Brow, 1798 (Photo credit: Utamaro, Wikipedia)
(Please click on the images to enlarge them)
 

* * *

In the middle of the nineteenth century, as of Édouard Manet, Japanese art was very influential in the west, particularly in France. The term Anglo-Japanese style was used beginning in 1851. As for the term Japonisme, it was coined in 1872, almost after the fact. By 1872, Japonisme had already had a significant impact on French art.

Many Japanese artists created prints. However, the better known are

Kitagawa Utamaro (ca. 1753 –  31 October 1806)

We will discuss Kitagawa Utamaro, who lived during the Edo, or Tokugawa, period (1603 and 1868) in the history of Japan. He arrived in Edo, the current-day Tokyo, with his mother under the name of Toyoaki[iii]. Utamaro was a pupil of Toriyama Sekien at the “aristocratic” Kanō School and may have been his son. He lived in Sekien’s house while he was growing up. (See Utamaro, Wikipedia.)

ukiyo-e: a genre of woodblock printing

Utamaro created several series of woodblock prints. Woodblock printing is the traditional form of Japanese printing and it has genres. Utamaro preferred using the popular ukiyo-e printing. It allowed mass-production of prints. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Utamaro is the greatest artists of the ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) movement.[iv] 

Kyōka and kabuki 

Beginning in 1782, in the earlier part of his life, Utamaro lived with Tsutaya Jūzaburō, a publisher who always remained a friend. During the years he spent with Jūzaburō, it is believed Utamaro worked as an illustrator of Kyōka Suigetsu (Mirror Flower, Water, Moon), sometimes called crazy poetry. At that point in his career, he also painted dancers and actors, kabuki. Examples are available at Google Images.

Nature revealed

However, between 1788 and 1791, Utamaro produced books depicting nature (insects, birds, shell). (See Utamaro, Wikipedia.)

3306201407630079 (1)

(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
(Photo credit: Google Images)
 

BIJINGA: WOMEN

 
00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00utamaro8
 
 
Flowers of Edo: Young Woman’s Narrative Chanting to the Samisen,
c. 1800 (Photo credit: Utamaro, Wikipedia)
 

However, as of 1791, Utamaro focussed on creating several series of studies portraying women, usually wearing a kimono. Such artwork, to which Utamaro owes the celebrity he enjoyed during his lifetime, is called bijinga (bijin-ga [FR]). Utamaro’s studies of women are considered among the finest bijinga ukiyo-e prints. Some of his bijinga prints depict a woman and a child at various stages of childhood. It has therefore been suggested that Utamaro married and had a child, which is mostly speculative but poetical.

Shunga: Erotica

Utamaro enjoyed erotica. He painted the courtesans, or prostitutes, of Edo’s  Yoshiwara‘s “pleasure” district. It is rumoured that he lived near the Yoshiwara district and that he may have been born in that district. Utamaro published thirty shunga  (erotica) books, many of which are listed in Wikipedia. For examples of bijinga and shunga, click on Utamaro.

Wikipedia (see Utamaro) provides a list of Utamaro’s collections of bijinga (bijin-ga [FR]) and shunga estampes (prints). Moreover, according to Wikipedia, Utamaro is best known for his:

Ten Studies in Female Physiognomy; A Collection of Reigning Beauties; Great Love Themes of Classical Poetry (sometimes called Women in Love containing individual prints such as Revealed Love and Pensive Love); and Twelve Hours in the Pleasure Quarters.”

A Terrible Pity

In 1804, he was sentenced to be handcuffed for fifty days for publishing prints depicting the concubines of military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi (2 February 1536 or 26 March 1537 – 18 September 1598). This sentence, horrible torture,[iii] crushed a proud Utamaro emotionally and ended his career. He died two years later, in 1806, at the age of 53.

Utamaro had produced some 2,000 prints and a number of paintings called surinomo, also prints, but produced in smaller quantities and for a more refined audience.

Kitagawa_Utamaro_-_Untitled_-_Google_Art_Project_(804362)Utamaro_Naniwaya_Okita

(Please click on the images to enlarge them.)
(Photo credit: Wikipaintings.org)
Portrait of Oiran Hanaogi, 1794
Portrait of Naniwaya Okita, 1793
 

Utamaro’s Influence

Utamaro, an immensely gifted artist, was discovered in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century.  As mentioned at the beginning of this post, prints made by Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige brought to the West the Anglo-Japanese style and Japonisme, or Japanism.

Japanese prints “had a major impact on Impressionist painting.” Impressionists were influenced by “[t]he clarity of line, spaciousness of composition, and boldness and flatness of colour and light in Japanese prints had a direct impact on their work and on that of their followers.”[v]

According to Wikipedia, “artists were especially affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the compositional freedom gained by placing the subject off-centre mostly with a low diagonal axis to the background.” (See Japonism, Wikipedia.)

405px-Lautrec_reine_de_joie_(poster)_1892 
 
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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901)
lithograph poster of 1892 (Photo credit: Japonism, Wikipedia)
 

Conclusion

Orientalism had precedents in Europe. Byzantine art and, especially, the art of the Ottoman Empire left an imprint. Among other historical circumstances, the Crusades and the travels of Marco Polo[vi] (c.1254 – 8–9 January 1324) contributed to a knowledge of the Orient in Europe. Trade routes were established.

However, when works were brought from Japan to Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century, after a period of seclusion, named sakoku, Japonisme became a pervasive influence. It started to permeate European art, overriding movements and extending into the decorative arts and design. It may have dealt a blow to academic art, sometimes called “art pompier [pompous].”

______________________________

[i] Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa and the remainder of his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji are classics.
 
[ii] Among other series, Utagawa Hiroshige produced The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō. “Between 1998 and 2000 British artist Nigel Caple made drawings of the 55 stations along the Tōkaidō. His inspiration was the Hoeido Edition of woodblock prints entitled The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō by Utagawa Hiroshige.” (See Tōkaidō, Wikipedia.) 
 
[iii] This is the name he is given in the French entry on Utamaro.  He published his first print, a book cover, under a pseudonym, gō, and later adopted the name Ichitarō Yusuke.
 
[iv] The samurai code of honour included seppuku, suicide as death with honour.
 
[v] “Utamaro”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 27 Jun. 2013
<http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/620551/Utamaro>.
 
[vi] Marco Polo’s Book of the Marvels of the World or The Travels of Marco Polo, 2 volumes, are Gutenberg EBooks #10636 and #12410.
 
A Courtesan
(Photo credit: Google Images)
(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)
Kitagawa_Utamaro_-_Hinakoto_the_courtesan_-_Google_Art_Project
 
 
© Micheline Walker
28 June 2013
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