Japonisme

Japonisme: Selections from the Elisabeth Dean Collection of French Prints

When: Tues., Nov. 20 – Sunday, March 2, 2008
Where: Moradian Gallery of French Art
Conversation with the Collector: Thurs., Jan. 31, 12:00 noon

The Elisabeth Dean Collection of French Prints includes an extraordinary selection of lithographs and wood block prints indicative of the profound influence of Japanese art on many of the French Post-Impressionistic artists. It is interesting to note that as early as 1795 the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris acquired its first Japanese prints supplemented by the acquisition of thirty-four Japanese illustrated albums in 1827, 1843 and 1855 by the library’s Cabinet des Estampes and Département des Manuscrits Orientaux. All of these had been either donated or purchased from merchants or officials that had resided in the Orient. Despite their presence in major public institutions as the British Museum and the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, these Japanese images were known to only a handful of scholars and librarians. By 1862 the study and inspiration of Japanese art began in earnest and was marked by a keenly receptive cultural interest by Europeans in the Japanese aesthetic.

The nineteenth-century brought about a radical transformation of the role of the European artist. Instead of working on commission for aristocratic patrons, artists in all media were more and more left to their own devices, creating works of art alone in their studios and then sending them into the market place hoping to attract a buyer and secure a sale. Innovative forms, new subjects and styles emerged from the changing economic structure brought about by the dawning of the industrial age and the importance of urban cities. The new clientele the artist sought to attract was increasingly comprised of the nouveau riche and the urban bourgeoisie and by the mid-nineteenth century the involvement of an anonymous public in artistic matters was an irrevocable fact that had been secured by mass production. New processes in lithographic printing and of the photographic print made art available to the general populace – the democratization of art coincided with the diversity of the japonisme movement of nineteenth-century France.

In 1868, Ernest Chesneau wrote regarding Japanese albums, that they demonstrated an appeal to the common man because of their generalized yet expressive draughtsmanship - “The dominant tendency in Japanese art is accentuation, the bringing to light of the essential character, or the vital and expressive character of a plant, of an animal, of a man or woman in the diversity of their individuality, of the whole of nature captured in its ensemble and in its particularities. This search for expression is so pronounced in Japanese drawings that frequently one finds them pushed just to the limits of caricature.”

The critics who supported Japanese art in the 1860s, and whose writings equated Japanese albums with Western popular prints were at the same time captivated by the stylistic and expressive possibilities that caricature and popular imagery offered. Discovering modern rather than historical subjects, they found that the new prints embodied a fresh, contemporary form that mirrored the dynamics of Parisian life. Printmakers, as those presented in this exhibition, (George Auriol, George Bottini, Hans Christiansen, Henri-Julien Detouche, Henri-Jacques Evenpoel, Henri-Charles Guérard, Auguste Lepêre, Alexandre, Lunois, Camille Martin, Henri Meunier, Richard Ranft, Paul Elie Ranson, Henri Riviére, and Henry Somm) carefully studied Japanese prints and albums thereby deliberately developing a cultivated simplification of style that enabled them to communicate directly with the common people. Japanese art was the means by which the European artists–already searching for a new visual language that would engage the people-an avenue by which it could be achieved.

Exhibits Underwriters

We appreciate the generosity of the following organizations and individuals for sponsoring the Winter Exhibitions at FAM:

  • James and Coke Hallowell
  • Dumont Printing
  • Electric Motor Shop
  • Bonner Family Foundation
  • Women's League
  • Harriett R. Stratton Trust
  • Mrs. Jane Cleave