while fred- erick cayley robinson's allegiance to the pre- raphaelite movement is obvious, and explicit, to my eye, given the outlining of forms, the asymmetrical balance on his canvases, and, to some extent, his subject matter, he was influenced by the japanese as well.

it's not surprising; he studied in paris at the very moment when japonisme was in bloom, the prints being shown and collected,





the work inspiring illustrator and painter (and jeweller, etc.) throughout the town. japonisme once removed?



obvious also is the charles rennie mackintosh influence. cayley robinson held a professorship at the glasgow school of art,



in mackintosh's wonderful building. the elongated simplification of form can be seen in the work of many artists from 'the glasgow school.'

on the other hand....

on the other hand.... this one makes me feel a little dizzy myself....

and they all have one thing in common...

but of course many of the sheet music covers owed a tremen- dous amount to japonisme with regards to style, not merely the ones with asian themes. we've got wiener werkstatte yiddisher boys and violin-playing clowns.

speaking of wiener werk- statte, we've also got a hymn to hawaii and some- thing involving vampires and tipperary.

there were the copycats.

and there were the real copycats. interestingly, it was gene buck who did the blue wilhelmina. buck was president of ascap for many years, and as well as his proli- fic illus- tra- tion work, he also wrote, or directed, or acted in plays, wrote the music too. i could find nothing else that copied anything else.

gene buck also did work that was just flat-out beautiful, as did many other artists, sung and... uh... unsung.

and then there are the ones that make you scratch your head and double-check the date: sapho (sic) (and she looks a little like me to me!) and, well, positively psychedelic!

some are just down- right, well, con- fused. (um... those are irises, not lilies) and.... (that's mt fuji, mate. you won't find that in hawaii).

and the ones you're just happy to find.

(by the way, i looked up lauterbach and it really does look a lot like this. but WAY LESS JAPANESE!)

with the diagonal structure, the dark outline, the all-over patterns, the blocks of color, the simplification of detail and line, and the appearence of being woodblocked rather than painted, these sheet music examples become prime illustrations of japonisme.

japonisme: so many faces

i would really love to try to describe all the different kind of things that get labeled with that term, by someone or other. i would like to illustrate each with an example, but this sounds too ambitious for one sitting, so i'll just get started and add things as i go along.

• at a most basic level what i have learned are the keystones that marked japonisme were these: blocks of flat color, blocks of intricate pattern (cloth, wallpaper), asymmetrical layout, an unusual framing, and a stronger than previously seen in the countries where it occurred: an emphasis on nature and daily, domestic life. these were the features in the japanese prints that most notably were adapted by the new art, l'art nouveau.

• another whole side of that happened at that moment, with regard to the art world only, to start with, was the philosophy that accompanied the new imports. for the first time, a concept of the present moment as having value in and of itself, of the deep importance of the simple play of light across the arm of the woman at the table across the way, or off the water, the simple sound of a bird in a tree, the serious wonder of a mother bathing a child: these things unheard-of in western art were now embraced. impressionism was born.

yes, there were other factors: a reaction to the industrial revolution, the arrival of the affordable train trip "out to nature" (which was, of course, ironically, part of that very revolution), new scientific discoveries into how humans see, even the invention of the portable painting kit, but the very number one thing without which the movement never would have started: that someone should say, in a place where westerners would hear it, essentially, "be here now."


(the two images here are jane avril by toulouse-lautrec, and the hermit thrush by thomas dewing. can you hear it singing?)