Japonaiserie (Van Gogh)

Japonaiserie () was the term the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh used to express the influence of Japanese art.
Before 1854, trade with Japan was confined to a Dutch monopoly and Japanese goods imported into Europe were for the most part confined to porcelain and lacquer ware. The Convention of Kanagawa put an end to the 200-year-old Japanese foreign policy of Seclusion and opened up trade between Japan and the West.
Artists including Manet, Degas and Monet, followed by Van Gogh, began to collect the cheap colour wood-block prints called "ukiyo-e" prints. For a while Vincent and his brother Theo dealt in these prints, and they eventually amassed hundreds of them, now housed in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam.
In a letter to Theo dated about 5 June 1888 Vincent remarks
A month later he wrote,
Influence of Japanese art on Van Gogh.
Van Gogh's interest in Japanese "ukiyo-e" woodblock prints dates from his time in Antwerp when he was also immersing himself in Delacroix's theory of colour and where he used them to decorate his studio. Vincent possessed twelve prints from Hiroshige's series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" and he also had bought "Two Girls Bathing" by Kunisada II, 1868. These prints had an increasing influence on his whole development.
During his subsequent stay in Paris, where "Japonisme" had become a fashion influencing the work of the Impressionists, he began to collect "ukiyo-e" prints and eventually to deal in them with his brother Theo. At that time he made three copies of "ukiyo-e" prints, "The Courtesan" and the two studies after Hiroshige.
Van Gogh developed an idealised conception of the Japanese artist which led him to the Yellow House at Arles and his attempt to form a utopian art colony there with Paul Gauguin.
His enthusiasm for Japanese art was later taken up by the Impressionists. In a letter of July 1888 he refers to the Impressionists as the "French Japanese". He strongly admired the techniques of Japanese artists, writing to Theo in September 1888:
Van Gogh's dealing in "ukiyo-e" prints brought him into contact with Siegfried Bing, who was prominent in the introduction of Japanese art to the West and later in the development of Art Nouveau.
Characteristic features of "ukiyo-e" prints include their ordinary subject matter, the distinctive cropping of their compositions, bold and assertive outlines, absent or unusual perspective, flat regions of uniform colour, uniform lighting, absence of "chiaroscuro", and their emphasis on decorative patterns. One or more of these features can be found in numbers of Vincent's paintings from his Antwerp period onwards.
"The Courtesan (after Eisen)".
The May 1886 edition of "Paris Illustré" was devoted to Japan with text by Tadamasa Hayashi who may have inspired van Gogh's utopian notion of the Japanese artist:
The cover carried a reverse image of a colour woodblock by Keisai Eisen depicting a Japanese courtesan or "Oiran". Vincent traced this and enlarged it to produce his painting.
Copies of Hiroshige prints.
Van Gogh made copies of two Hiroshige prints. He altered their colours and added borders filled with calligraphic characters he borrowed from other prints.