the greater of the two?

i came across a very interesting article about a museum exhibition in japan:

It can only be described as culture shock of historical scope. After 300 years of virtually complete isolation, the painters of a nation with its own proud artistic traditions--refined, diverse, inspired--were suddenly confronted with paintings showing scenes of unknown lands with a realism that they had never imagined within the realm of painting, and executed in paints capable of a seemingly impossible range of nuance, even transparency.

Even if a similar culture shock was occurring on the other side of the world at about the same time, as European painters were enchanted with the intriguing perspectives and creative use of color in Japanese ukiyo-e prints, the shock of the Japanese painters must surely have been the greater of the two.(page no longer available.)

the translated version of the page about the exhibition is here.

the images here are by john william waterhouse (apparently untranslatable), a painter clearly in both the pre-raphaelite and impressionist camps, with a look clearly quite different from what the japanese artists were doing.

the second i'm afraid i can't figure out the name of the second artist, but i believe i can see influences of van gogh and even the nabis.

woman with halo

well, galliano may have gone all out in his interpretation of japonisme, but jean paul gaultier has given us a glorious revisit of mucha.

woman with halo, this is what appears in nearly every single mucha image. of course he is not the only designer who has sainted us.

our hats have often served as halo, and in japan, the greater the halo, the more prestigious the courtesan.

and then of course there's often been umbrella as halo.

but easily the most notable is halo as halo itself.1





(gaultier, mucha, gaultier, barbier, unknown, kinichika toyohara, maud tousey fangel, unknown, yoshitoshi -- i think...., fr. theodore jurievicz)

japonisme and galliano

Dior brings Japonism- and Couture- back to Paris1

Amanda Gore in Designers, Luxury, Paris, Show Reports












The magnificent couture gowns sent down the runway by John Galliano for Dior yesterday had more than a slight flavour of geisha, as models with perfectly painted white faces were swathed in folds of rich fabrics and exotic colours in outfits intricately constructed of origami pleats, kimono jackets, obi belts, and Hokusai-inspired prints.






The highly extravagant and elaborate outfits showed that the skills of couture are still very much alive, and demanded poise and grace from the models.2


(gekko ogata; helen dryden)

blue heads

who is this bird, or these birds?

it seems unlikely that there are two completely different birds both with blue heads, red breasts, and black throats.








but... the ones on the berries have longer, thinner beaks. the ones on the cherries have a white eye-stripe and an orange tail.





the ones on the berries have no eye-stripe and a black tail which appears to be shorter.





is it a case of artistic licence?












(the two top ones on the left are by ohara koson and i couldn't retrace that third one; on the right, the top and middle are sozan ito, and the bottom one is biho hirose )

scotland and japan

i have come across a number of painters of this era who are western, and who paint in a decidedly western style, but favor japanese subjects. one of these is the scottish painter edward atkinson hornel.

while some of his paintings and drawings take on the asymmetry of the japanese prints, in general his main influence was the beauty of what he saw in japan.




hornel was sent to japan with his friend george henry, by his glasgow art dealer, alexander reid, who was responsible for interesting the two painters in the new wave of japonisme, and the old one of japanese prints.1






henry as well loved painting the visions he saw in japan, but only his watercolors survived the trip home; the oils were not sufficiently dry.2









an early subscriber to the infusion of japonisme, japan anyway, into literature was the man who called himself pierre loti. his 'madame chrysanthemum'3 is considered the first japonisme novel, a precursor to 'madame butterfly.' hornel created illustrations for it.

the book is here.

(top two images are hornel; the right-hand image below them is henry; the illustration is again by hornel; the last is of hornel by bessie macnichol.)

reading recommendations desired

some say that stephane mallarme's poetry was influenced by japonisme -- not in the way mentioned earlier, the simplified form, without rhyme, as seen in haiku.

it's obvious that he was into these new forms from the east; he made these fans, this notebook, with illustrations borrowed directly from hiroshige.

what has been said is that mallarme took the same things that the visual artists took: a certain use of spaces, a certain focus on nature, a certain "color."

i find that fascinating but you couldn't learn it from me because i have never read mallarme. nor have i read zola, or proust, or much of thomas mann, henry james, andre gide, d h lawrence, or anyone else who could really give me a picture of what it was like living exactly when all this was going on.

so i would greatly appreciate recommendations. if it's a translation, whose version is the best? who should i read? where should i start? thanking you in advance.

(Stéphane Mallarmé-fan for Misia Natanson; Stéphane Mallarmé and François Coppée- inscriptions and drawings in Méry Laurent's album, ca. 1891; Signature fan, ca. 1892; Hiroshige.)

perseus and the children

several days ago i talked about ethel mars and maud hunt squire. i wasn't able to find many images by them, but pk at bibliodyssey has unburied some treasures.

the couple illustrated children's books together, and pk has offered up four: 'Children of Our Town,' 'The Adventures of Ulysses,' 'The Heroes,' and 'A Child's Garden of Verse.'

i am filled with astonishment at the obvious traces of the japanese influence in these seemingly unrelated images; not a fan, kimono, or painted screen to be found.

but the wonderful line is there, along with the asymmetry, the use of large foreground framing images, even the way the water is drawn.

check 'em out. & thanks, pk.

drape & accent

i thought this one was a good one for looking at the colors de goncourt was talking about. i am also exploring the comparisons of shawls and kimono as far as drape and accent for a woman; i think they do much the same thing.


(Courtesans Strolling Beneath Cherry Trees Before the Daikokuya Teahouse1789 Kitagawa Utamaro)

the light

alexandre lunois made his first original color lithographs in 1886, and his continued work in this field helped to elevate the field to a fine art by the end of the century.


his study of japanese art is particularly evident in his use of color, outline, structure, and the flat planes of hue. the shape of clothing and lighting fixtures are an indication as well.

edmond de goncourt, an artist, writer, philo- sopher, critic, and contemporary of lunois said of his work, "a very remarkable print is the lithograph entitled spanish dancers be-
fore the dance. a sheet of the grandest character might pass for a japanese imitation in its intensity of tones, the raw blue at the bottom, the yellow, the pure red, the nocturnal black shadows at the fullness of the figure."






the image with the single woman is the one from the 'seeking the floating world' catalogue, as is the quote. interestingly, it is entitled, l'illumination, the light.

flowers from our shores

it occurred to me this evening that though many of my favorites from this era are women, i show you the work of more men than women.

well... there are a lot more to choose from, in the west, and in the east there are only men to choose from. but i want to remedy that a bit tonight. i've mentions some of these women before, but here's a little context.

Edna Boies Hopkins studied under Dow at the Pratt Institute in 1899 and 1900, learning block printing and Dow's principles of composition. She then taught design at the Veltin School for Girls in New York City.

Hopkins taught the wood-block technique to Ethel Mars (1876-1956), a friend from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio, who moved to New York in 1900.











Mars in turn taught Maud Squire (1873-1955), also an art student from Cincinnati living in New York. By 1906 each of the three women had settled in Paris, and together they formed the nucleus of a group of American print makers.

In 1910 they were joined by Margaret Jordan Patterson, who had studied at Pratt in 1895, and although she had not enrolled in Dow's classes, she credited him as her teacher.


Patterson, who was also a textile designer, learned the wood-block technique from Mars.1



Magazine Antiques, Sept, 1996 by Lindsay Leard

(margaret jordan patterson, mjp, edna boies hopkins, ebh, ethel mars, maud squire, mjp, mjp.)

lest we forget

In 1885, King Leopold II declared the Congo Free State (as large as the whole of Europe) to be his personal fiefdom and set about enriching himself and Belgium in earnest. In 1887, Scottish surgeon J B Dunlop used rubber for constructing inflatable tubes for bicycles and the demand for rubber grew sharply. The motor car was also becoming popular and Leopold sought to provide the rubber for the tyres. Leopold issued a decree in 1891 giving himself the monopoly on the trade in rubber and ivory. The same decree obliged natives to supply these products without payment. Those who refused or failed to supply enough had their villages burned down, their children murdered and their hands cut off, even if dead, as proof to the Belgian masters.1