The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

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122 CHAPTER 31 The Move Toward Modernism

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Romantics, the Japanese had little interest in the pictur-

esque; rather, they gave attention to bold contrasts and

decorative arrangements of abstract shapes and colors. The

absence of chiaroscuro and aerial perspective reduced the

illusion of spatial depth and atmospheric continuity

between near and far objects. All of these features are evi-

dent in one of the most famous mid nineteenth-century

Japanese landscape prints: Mount Fuji Seen Below a Wave at

Kanagawa(Figure 31.11), from the series “Thirty-six Views

of Mount Fuji” by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849).

When Japanese prints arrived in the West (see Figure

31.13), they exercised an immediate impact on fine and

commercial art, including the art of the lithographic poster

(see Figure 31.12). Monet and Degas bought them (along

with Chinese porcelains) in great numbers, and van Gogh,

a great admirer of Hokusai, insisted that his own work was

“founded on Japanese art.”

Théodore Duret, a French art critic of the time and

an enthusiast of impressionist painting, was one of the

first writers to observe the impact of Japanese prints on

nineteenth-century artists. In a pamphlet called “The

Impressionist Painters” (1878), Duret explained:

We had to wait until the arrival of Japanese albums

before anyone dared to sit down on the bank of a

river to juxtapose on canvas a boldly red roof, a

white wall, a green poplar, a yellow road, and blue

water. Before Japan it was impossible; the painter

always lied. Nature with its frank colors was in plain

sight, yet no one ever saw anything on canvas but

attenuated colors, drowning in a general halftone.

As soon as people looked at Japanese pictures,

where the most glaring, piercing colors were placed

side by side, they finally understood that there

were new methods for reproducing certain effects

of nature.

Japonisme, the influence of Japan on European art of

the late nineteenth century, proved to be multifaceted: the

prints coincided with the Impressionist interest in casual

urban subjects (especially those involving women) and

Figure 31.10 KUNISADA, triptych showing the different processes of

printmaking, early nineteenth century. Japanese woodblock color print.

Left:the printer has just finished taking an impression by rubbing the baren(a

round pad made of a coil of cord covered by a bamboo sheath) over the paper on

the colored block; numerous brushes and bowls of color are visible. Kunisada has

made the design more interesting by using women, though the craftsmen were

almost always men (information from Julia Hutt, Understanding Far Eastern Art.

New York: Dutton, 1987, 53).

Center:a woman (in the foreground) sizing paper sheets that are then hung up

to dry; another is removing areas with no design from the block with a chisel.

Right:a woman with an original drawing pasted onto a block conversing with

another who is sharpening blades on a whetstone.