History & Practice Session 2: The Influence of Japonisme

Prior to 1853, much of Asia was unknown to Europeans. Early historical accounts were often distorted - the likes of Marco Polo and Voltaire painted a wildly inaccurate picture of China. However, despite their inaccuracy, these accounts still piqued the interest of the western world - they saw it as a primitive land of decadent secrets, open to their exploitation.
     
      Japan itself was largely isolated for 220 years under the 'sakoku' ("closed country") policy, which severely restricted trade and contact between them and other countries. However, having piqued the interest of the west, they were forcibly opened by the Americans by threat. Thus began Europe's love affair with Japanese art.

     The traditional Japanese art style, the precursor to what we now call manga, was completely new to Europe. Traditionally done on woodblocks, they were unlike anything seen before; such unusual rarities were of great value in the west, and the Victorian era saw them sold at incredibly high prices. Soon, the obsession with Japanese art and culture grew so intense it birthed the Japonisme movement.

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Japan's Influence on Van Gogh

Many European artists were influenced by Japonisme, but I have chosen to focus on Vincent Van Gogh. I have a particular fascination with Van Gogh; not just his artwork, but his ideas and mentality. I was unaware of his interest in Japan, and it was intriguing to pull away from the "stereotypical" Van Gogh pieces and look at some of his lesser-known work that displayed this influence.

      Van Gogh was a Dutch artist. He was born in 1853 - exactly the year Japan was opened to Europe, as aforementioned. This means that  much of his work is influenced by Japonisme, but he did have a few different painting phases where the influence was much less noticeable. First, let's look at two pieces in which he heavily drew from Japanese art:
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'Street in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer' - Van Gogh, 1888

'Nursery on Schenkweg' - Van Gogh, 1882

​These pieces took my personal interest because they are so far from the stereotypical style we picture when we think of Van Gogh. We tend to think of the likes of 'Starry Night' (which, coincidentally, is also influenced by Hokusai's ukiyo-e woodblock print 'The Great Wave'), but his lesser-known work is equally interesting. Let's compare these two Van Gogh pieces to similar-looking examples of traditional Japanese art:
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'Thatched Retreat on Cold Mountain' - Yosa Buson, 1770s

'View of Mount Fuji from Harajuku' - Utagawa Hiroshige, 1830s

​The​ piece on the left is ink on silk scroll, and the piece on the right is a ukiyo-e woodblock print (carved and inked). Even at a glance between these two traditional Japanese works and Van Gogh's later pieces, it's clear this style had a massive influence on him as an artist.
     
     Before the emergence of Japonisme, European art in the early 1800s was largely characterised by paints and oils on canvas. However, driven by his fascination of the Japanese technique, Van Gogh broke from the norm by using pen and ink - dip pens, quill pens, reed pens - to mimic their style. As well as using similar mediums, he employed similar techniques - fine brush strokes and dots to detail foliage, grass and thatched rooftops, and bold lines of black ink brushed in a calligraphy-like way to outline the focal points of his paintings. Japonisme influenced his compositional technique as well; similar to traditional ukiyo-e, Van Gogh had a tendency to use trees, buildings and larger objects at the edge of his pieces to frame a bleaker central space. The use of fine, individual brush/pen strokes inspired by the Japanese ultimately led Van Gogh to develop the "unique" style we know him for.

     Finally, for comparison, let's look at what Dutch artists before Van Gogh and the Japonisme movement were creating:
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'The Milkmaid' - Wybrand Hendriks, 1815

​Wybrand Hendriks was born in Amsterdam in 1744, making him more than a century older than Van Gogh. As an artist, he existed between the Dutch Golden Age of painting and the Amsterdam Impressionism movement - as such, his paintings were very much realistic and done in oils. He was influenced by French realism, and had no influence whatsoever from Japan; after all, he never saw the opening of the country in his lifetime. Overall, 'The Milkmaid' is a stark contrast to the post-impressionist, Japonisme-inspired work of Van Gogh, which appears much less realistic and more abstract in appearance.