13 Yoko Chiba, "Japonisme: East-West Renaissance in the Late 19th Century." Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 31, no. 2 (1998

The impressionist artists of the nineteenth-century avant-garde were among the most

dedicated new customers of ukiyo-e prints. Tired of the classical artistic tradition touted by the

Académie des Beaux Arts and the Salon de Paris, impressionists had begun seeking a new way

to approach artwork.5 Discovering ukiyo-e prints provided them with a fresh source of

inspiration. Eschewing the stiffness and formality of classical European artworks, Japanese

artworks depicted down-to-earth scenes from everyday life with refreshing honesty. Along with

other impressionists like close friend Edgar Degas, Cassatt felt drawn to the directness and linear

elegance of ukiyo-e. Openly admiring the beauty of Japanese prints, she strove to capture the

same stylistic qualities and the humility of daily scenes in her own emulations.6

However, due to a disconnect with firsthand knowledge of Japan, at the time artists also

viewed Japan through a lens shaped largely by European stereotypes. This led to complex

misunderstandings as artists continued to seek inspiration from ukiyo-e and fed into the

“Japanomania” of the nineteenth-century. Since Japan had been closed off to trade for centuries,

lack of knowledge about the country led it to possess a mysterious and “irresistible fascination” in Europe.7 Information disseminated through French newspapers, journals, and exhibitions

introduced Japanese objects as “exotic” and “sensual” to audiences.8 While European artists

admired the formalist aesthetics of ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints, impressionist painter

Mary Cassatt’s emulations of ukiyo-e reveal that she perceived Japan through a rigid,

5 Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 51.

6 Polyxeni Potter, "Women Caring for Children in 'The Floating World.'" Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 11 (November 2006): 1808. Gale General OneFile.

7 Lionel Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West. (London: Phaidon, 2011) 13.

8 Criss, "Japonisme and beyond,” 38.

conventional viewpoint shaped by the genteel standards of bourgeois Parisian society and the

exoticization of Japan in European culture at the time.

The term japonisme was first coined in 1872 by Philippe Burty to refer to the influence of

Japanese artwork on French art and design.9 Japonaiseries are Japanese art objects such as fans,

decorative screens, ceramics. Viewed as a sign of elevated social and economic status in Europe,

japonaiseries were often used as decorations in the homes of the wealthy bourgeoisie.10 Japanese

woodblock color prints are known as ukiyo-e, a term first devised by seventeenth-century

Japanese writer Asa Ryoi in reference to the ephemeral aspects of life.11 Ukiyo-e translates to the

“Floating World,” with uki meaning “overhead” and yo as “world.”12 First emerging in the

seventeenth century, the ukiyo-e tradition depicted scenes of daily life in Edo Japan. It

represented the lively and especially the pleasure-seeking aspects of urban living, often depicting

courtesans, kabuki (Japanese theater) actors, or landscapes.13 Impressionism was an avant-garde

artistic movement that emerged in mid-nineteenth century Paris; abandoning the traditional

classical painting style, impressionists focused on capturing light, nature, scenes of everyday life

instead. They strove to imbue works with a sense of emotion and spontaneity, using loose,

expressive brushstrokes and bright colors.14

9 Criss, 9.

10 Criss, 2.

11 Roderick Conway Morris, "Pleasure in the Floating World." International Herald Tribune, April 17, 2004, 10. Gale General OneFile.

12 Edmond de Goncourt, Michael Locey, and Lenita Locey. Utamaro. (New York: Parkstone International, 2012) 11.

13 Yoko Chiba, "Japonisme: East-West Renaissance in the Late 19th Century." Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 31, no. 2 (1998), 4.

14 Nathalia Brodskaya, Impressionism. (New York: Parkstone International, 2010) 3. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Japanese prints first began entering Europe after Commodore Perry’s 1853 expedition.15

By 1868, influential dealers like Siegfried Bing had begun specializing in introducing the prints

to European buyers.16 Japanese art and culture captivated the imaginations of European artists

and writers, who became dedicated collectors of japanoiseries. Art historian Ernest Chesneau,

recalling early 1860s France, wrote:

Old Ivories, enamels, faience and porcelain, bronzes, lacquers, wood sculptures, sewn

materials, embroidered satins, playthings, simply arrived at a merchant’s shop and

immediately left for artists’ studios or writers’ studios.17

Among the most passionate admirers of Japanese art were brothers Edmond and Jules de

Goncourt, art dealers and collectors who published several writings on their specialty, Japanese

works. The brothers remarked that the interest in Japanese art had become so great that it was

“spreading to everything and everyone, even to idiots and middle-class women.”18

Ukiyo-e’s fresh, new style served as a stark contrast against classical guidelines and proportions. As the impressionists began collecting prints of their own, they viewed the ukiyo-e

style as a method of “liberating [themselves] from conventionally stiff portrayals of human and natural forms.”19 Ukiyo-e’s lack of perspective, flat planes of color, light with no shadows, and

15 Amir Lowell Abou-jaoude, "A Pure Invention: Japan, Impressionism, and the West, 1853-1906." The History Teacher 50, no. 1 (2016), 59.

16 Deborah Johnson, "Cassatt's Color Prints of 1891: The Unique Evolution of a Palette." Notes in the History of Art 9, no. 3 (1990), 33. JSTOR.

17 Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings, 38.

18 Ives, The Great Wave, 12.

19 Abou-jaoude, "A Pure Invention," 60.

rhythmic use of decorative patterns all were key characteristics adopted by the impressionists as

antithetical to classical tradition.20 Writing in his journal on September 30, 1864, Edmond de

Goncourt praised Japanese artists for their radical skill:

Everything that they do is taken from observation. They represent what they see: the

incredible effects of the sky, the stripes on a mushroom, the transparency of the jellyfish.

Their art copies nature as does Gothic art. Nothing like this in the Greeks: their art,

except for sculpture, is false and invented.21

Japanese artists were fascinated by elements of nature and strove to represent it through

careful study of the natural world; as in Utagawa Hiroshige’s print Iris garden, Horikiri (Horikiri

no hanashobu) (See Fig. 2), ukiyo-e artists often rendered nature scenes with exacting detail. The

impressionists’ introduction to ukiyo-e presented a fresh view of life that answered their desires

to break away from the stilted artistic style of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Easy access to

ukiyo-e prints through widespread exhibitions and dealers specializing in Japanese artwork

helped fuel an increase in artistic interest across Europe, providing an alternate to traditional

classical artwork. Impressionists began studying the art style intently, with Cassatt among the

forefront of drawing heavy inspiration from Japanese woodblocks.

Cassatt’s initial encounter with ukiyo-e occurred at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts exhibition

of 1890, which featured a vast display of 763 woodblock prints imported from Japan. (See Fig.

2) The new art style fascinated Cassatt, leading her to acquire many of the exhibited works from

art dealer Siegfried Bing.22 Cassatt despised conventional artwork and thus felt drawn to

20 Chiba, "Japonisme: East-West Renaissance," 6.

21 Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings, 34.

22 Johnson, "Cassatt's Color Prints of 1891," 34.

Figure 2. Utagawa Hiroshige. Iris garden, Horikiri (Horikiri no hanashobu), 1857. Color woodblock print.

ukiyo-e’s honest depictions of everyday life. Inspired, she then began attempting her own emulations, turning to the medium of printmaking and developing her own techniques as she

continued practicing.23

The strongest reason for Cassatt’s meticulous emulations of ukiyo-e lay in its themes of

the relationship between mothers and their children. Cassatt immediately felt drawn specifically

to Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro’s ukiyo-e prints, endeared by Utamaro’s intimate, sympathetic treatment of mother-child love in his art. Unlike most nineteenth-century European

depictions, Utamaro did not attempt to stiffen or formalize the mother-child relationship. He

23 Potter, "Women Caring for Children in 'The Floating World."