Notes: Japonisme and Japanese Art

Notes for the Text

Like Whistler and Manet: Hulsker, pp. 250-251. 202. Stores specializing: Orton, p. 2: According to Orton, “[s]ome forty ‘Japonneries’ and ‘Chinoiseries’ as well as many department stores and ‘Curiosites,’ were selling Japanese marchandise” by the time Van Gogh arrived in Paris in 1886. Monet collected both: Stolwijk and Thomson, p. 155. Famously painted his wife: La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume), 1876, oil on canvas, 91.3 x 56 in., 232 x 142 cm., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Its shadow plays: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, pp. 218-219: Welsh-Ovcharov cites a show entitled “Les ombres Japonaises du Chat Noir” (Japanese Shadow Plays of Le Chat Noir) that was presented at the Cabaret du Mirliton in June and July of 1886. According to Orton, “Vincent would have been familiar with Henri Rivière’s Chinese shadow plays, which were incorporated into the cabaret of the ‘Chat Noir’ in December 1886. Rivière, who knew Theo personally, was an artist whose interest in the Orient, and in particular Japanese prints, was reflected not only in his shadow plays but also in his graphic work of 1887.” (Orton, pp. 3-4.) L’art japonais: Welsh-Ovcharov, Vincent van Gogh: His Paris Period, 1886-1888, p. 179. Roskill also makes a persuasive case, based on passages in the letters, that Van Gogh read Théodore Duret’s 1884 essay, also called “L’art japonais,” which was reprinted the following year in Critique d’Avant Garde (Roskill, pp. 265-266).

Seafaring uncle: “The Name Van Gogh,” p. 362. Dorus van Gogh’s fourth sister Geertruda (“Truitje”) was married to Abraham Anthonie ‘s Graeuwen (a commander in the Dutch navy), who, according to an entry in the Van Gogh family chronicle dated 1858, “brought over many things from Japan, where he had helped teach [the art of navigation] in the Navy for a couple of years. Those things were saved at his sister’s and were looked at by friends.” Theo stayed at the Graeuwen household in Drumpt during the years he attended the H. B. S. school in nearby Tiel. (According to Smulders, Officer Graeuwen “assist[ed] in establishing a Japanese navy [Smulders, n.p.].)

The books he read: In the summer of 1882, not long after arriving in The Hague, Van Gogh read his first book by Émile Zola, Une page d’amour (A Page of Love) (JLB 244, 7/6/1882). He commended especially its descriptions of Paris, descriptions for which the book was widely celebrated. In one of those descriptions, Van Gogh would have read the following passage in which the writer sees his beloved city through the eyes of a Japanese printmaker: “Now the city had lost that shimmering white-flecked curtain that flowed in tremulous waves over the rust-coloured house-fronts. From the massed whiteness in which they had slumbered, the buildings now emerged as black as if centuries of damp had mildewed them. Whole streets seemed in ruins, as if rotted with saltpetre, the roofs about to collapse, the windows already caved in. One square, now visible as a chalky rectangle, seemed heaped high with débris. But as the blue strip over Montmartre grew broader, light flowed in, limpid and cold as spring water, and showed Paris as under a glass, its furthest distance as clear as a Japanese print.” (Zola, p. 254.)

The prints he collected: In The Hague, Van Gogh not only collected but championed a relatively unknown French illustrator, Félix Élie Régamey. Almost all the Régamey works Van Gogh cites in his letters are related to Japan, a country the artist visited in the 1870s: “Have found 2 beautiful Régameys, a Foundling hospital in Japan by F. Régamey” (JLB 325, 3/5/1883); “F. Régamey travels a great deal and, as you know, is very strong in the Japanese” (ibid.); “Do you know a draughtsman called Régamey? His work has great character, I have woodcuts by him, among them drawings done in prison—and Gypsies and Japanese” (JLB 330, 3/18/1883); “Then Régameys—beautiful Japanese subjects” (JLB 359, 7/3/1883); “Régamey is clever. This print is by Félix, who often does the Japanese things” (JLB 360, 7/7/1883); “F. Régamey paints Japanese” (JLB 371, 8/7/1883). In a letter Van Gogh wrote to Antoine Furnée, his drawing student in The Hague, on the eve of Furnée’s departure for the Far East in 1884, Van Gogh spoke encouragingly of “several painters [who] went to China and Japan, and I saw very fine things from those countries” (JLB 421, 1/6/1884-1/18/1884). Apparently, Van Gogh was referring to “things” done in these countries by Westerners, in particular Régamey, not to things done by those countries’ artists.

The Salon catalogues: BVG 394, 2/1/1885: In a letter from February 1885, Van Gogh lists the images that “struck” him in a catalogue of the Salon of 1884. One of them was “a figure of a girl by Émile Levy, ‘Japonaise.’” The reference is to Émile Lévy, a French painter, illustrator, and pastellist. Context: JLB 483, 2/5/1885-2/26/1885: “What also struck me was a figure of a girl by Emile Lévy, Japonaise, …”

Japonese art in Chérie: BVG 426, 10/10/1885-10/11/1885: Van Gogh read Chérie in his last weeks in Nuenen and immediately sent the book to Theo, but without comment about the novel’s introduction celebrating the triumph of Japonisme and the brothers’ role as “propagandists” in that triumph. Van Gogh’s only comment about the book was a self-justifying one (“De Goncourt is always good, and the way he works so conscientious, and so much toil goes into it” [JLB 534, 10/10/1885]) and the artistic direction he took from it was toward another of the Goncourt brothers’ favorites: eighteenth century French art. “There’s a book by De Goncourt about Chardin, Boucher, Watteau and Fragonard,” he wrote in the next letter; “I must read it” (JLB 535, 10/13/1885). It wasn’t until Van Gogh arrived in Antwerp in November that the Goncourts’ (brothers Edmond and Jules Huot) enthusiasm for Japanese art “registered,” at least in his letters to Theo. This was probably a function of both the exotic character of the port city (with a heavy emphasis on trade with the Far East) and the need to replace the prints that he had abandoned in Nuenen as decorations for his studio (necessary to his project for attracting models). Sund, as always, judiciously gauges the influence of Van Gogh’s reading: “Van Gogh’s enthusiasm for Japanese woodblock prints—which he began to collect in this era—was, if not instigated by the Goncourts, at least encouraged by their partisanship.” (Sund, pp. 114-115). Sund also points out that Van Gogh subsequently found a “paean to [Japanese] prints” in Manette Salamon, (ibid.) which he probably read in Paris, but does not mention until Arles (JLB 800, 9/5/1889-9/6/1889). Context: JLB 534, 10/10/1885: “Will also send you before long a book by De Goncourt—Chérie. De Goncourt is always good, and the way he works so conscientious, and so much toil goes into it.”

Images of geishas: BVG 437, 11/28/1885. From Antwerp, Van Gogh reported that he had “pinned a set of Japanese prints on the walls that I find very diverting” (JLB 545, 11/28/1885). Among the subjects he listed was “those little female figures in gardens or on the shore” (ibid.). In February 1885, in Nuenen, he complimented Émile Lévy’s Salon entry Japonaise (JLB 483, 2/5/1885-2/26/1885). Prints depicting geishas can been seen in the backgrounds of some of his portraits from Paris, including Agostina Segatori (F 370 JH 1208) and Portrait of Père Tanguy (F 363 JH 1351). In late 1887, Van Gogh traced a famous print of a courtesan and transformed it into a colorful painting (Courtisane [F 373 JH 1298]). The overwhelming majority of the Japanese prints that remained in the Van Gogh brothers’ collection after Van Gogh’s death depicted geishas. (Among the other subjects Van Gogh listed in his earliest collection of crépons in Antwerp were “horsemen, flowers, [and] gnarled thorn branches” (JLB 545, 11/28/1885). A print that fits the last of these categories was also transformed by Van Gogh into a painting (Flowering Plum Tree [F371 JH 1296]). Context: JLB 545, 11/28/1885: “My studio’s quite tolerable, mainly because I’ve pinned a set of Japanese prints on the walls that I find very diverting. You know, those little female figures in gardens or on the shore, horsemen, flowers, gnarled thorn branches.”

Busy city scenes: BVG 437, 11/28/1885. Van Gogh describes the busy docks of Antwerp as “one huge Japonaiserie, fantastic, singular, strange” (JLB 545, 11/28/1885). Imagining painting the bustling docks, he elaborates on the similarities he sees to Japanese prints of city life: “One could do anything there, townscapes—figures of the most diverse character—the ships as the central subject with water and sky in delicate grey—but above all—Japonaiseries. I mean, the figures there are always in motion, one sees them in the most peculiar settings, everything fantastic, and interesting contrasts keep appearing of their own accord. A white horse in the mud, in a corner where heaps of merchandise lie covered with a tarpaulin—against the old, black, smoke-stained walls of the warehouse. Quite simple—but a Black and White effect.” (ibid.) The specific iconography of these prints appears to have interested him less than the overall effect: the complexity of action condensed into a “perfectly simple” expression. Context: JLB 545, 11/28/1885: “Well, these docks are one huge Japonaiserie, fantastic, singular, strange—at least so one can see them. I’d like to walk with you there to find out whether we look at things the same way.” Panoramas of a distant world: Van Tilborgh, ‘A Kind of Bible’: The Collection of Prints and Illustrations, pp. 38-42: Van Tilborgh suggests that Van Gogh’s sudden but “unfeigned enthusiasm” for Japanese art in Antwerp “was undoubtedly due more to his long-time interest in illustrations of subjects from far-off, exotic lands.” Kôdera agrees: “his interest in [Japanese prints] was primarily for their exotic content” (Kôdera, pp. 87-88).

Transferring them to canvas: There are only three surviving examples of this remarkable and (according to Hendriks) almost unique imagery (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 140). Two of these are landscapes: Flowering Plum Orchard (F 371 JH 1296), based on the print “The plum orchard at Kameido” by Utagawa Hiroshige; and Bridge in the Rain (F 372 JH 1297) based on the print “The large bridge at Atake in an afternoon rain,” also by Hiroshige. The third surviving painting in which Van Gogh traced a Japanese image is Courtisane (F 373 JH 1298), which is based on the print Oiran by Ikeda Eisen, also known as Kesai Eisen, which was reproduced (in reverse) on the cover of Paris Illustré in May 1886. (An oiran was a high-ranking, professional courtesan.) A madly elaborate process: For a full description, see Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 142.

Twice the size of the original: Hiroshige’s The plum orchard at Kameido is 15 x 10.3 in. (30.8 x 26.2 cm.); Van Gogh’s Flowering Plum Tree (F 371 JH 1296) is 22 x 18.5 in. (55.9 x 47 cm.). The large bridge at Atake in an afternoon rain, the smallest print Van Gogh used, is 13.25 x 8.75 in. (33.7 x 22.2 cm.); while Bridge in the Rain (F 372 JH 1297), at 28.75 x 21.25 in. (73 x 54 cm.), is larger than Plum Orchard. Eisen’s Oiran, as Van Gogh traced it from the cover of Paris Illustré, was 15.5 x 10.25 in. (39.4 x 26 cm.), while Van Gogh’s Courtisane (F 373 JH 1298) is 43.5 x 24 in. (110.5 x 61 cm.). The differences in degree of enlargement suggest that Van Gogh was fiddling with a formula. While the last two paintings appear to double, or nearly double, the size of the original image, this is partly offset by the wide borders on all sides. Plum Orchard has borders on only the left and right, creating what appear to be inadvertent spaces on either side. By the time of the later two images, Bridge in the Rain and Courtisane, Van Gogh has adjusted the enlargement formula to allow for a roughly even border on all four sides. This evidence of calculation indicates that Van Gogh purposefully chose the larger canvas to allow himself the freedom of the wider framing void.

“Plates”: Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 141: Hendriks quotes Bernard’s injunction to “simplifier la couleur” (simplify the color) by using “teintes presques plates” (virtually flat hues). The play on the word ”plates,” which also means plate or platter in French, is easy and, no doubt, intentional and invokes Bernard’s example of stained-glass windows. A scene of pedestrians scurrying: Bridge in the Rain (F 372 JH 1297), based on Utagawa Hiroshige’s The Large Bridge at Atake in an Afternoon Rain. Limbs of a plum tree: Flowering Plum Tree (F 371 JH 1296), based on the print The Plum Orchard at Kameido by Utagawa Hiroshige.

Stretchers didn’t match: Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, pp. 144-145: Hendriks comments that these borders “changed the character of the painting. From the exercise in flat and bright use of colors following the example of Japanese prints it now became much more an intentional Japonaiserie, a curiosity in Japanese style. In the inventory of Theo’s collection from 1890 the work was rightly described as a ‘fantasie japonaise,’ after which Jo van Gogh-Bonger introduced the term ‘Japonaiserie’ that afterwards became common.” It is suspected that these borders began as an artifact of the enlargement process, not as an intentional graphic strategy. Which is not to disagree with Hendriks that they proved serendipitous. If her ordering of the “Japonaiserie” is accurate, Van Gogh clearly recalibrated his enlargement process to allow for larger and more evenly distributed border spaces in subsequent efforts.

Decorative gibberish of signs: Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 148: “With a few exceptions the characters [were] understandable, but the combinations are not always.” Some of the same characters appear in the borders of both Flowering Plum Orchard and Bridge in the Rain. Van Gogh appears to have included a private joke with Bernard, as one of the Japanese signs he uses in Bridge in the Rain is taken from a print in a series depicting a brothel district in Edo. Slashing green on orange: Flowering Plum (after Hiroshige), F 371 JH 1296, 1887, oil on canvas, 21.7 x 18.1 in., 55 x 46 cm., Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Hendriks identifies the colors of the border calligraphy as green on orange (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p p. 143, 144). Or red on green: Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 146. Directly from the tube: Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 143 (Flower Orchard) and p. 146 (Bridge in the Rain).

Utagawa Hiroshige: Utagawa Hiroshige was one of the two recognized masters of landscape among Japanese printmakers (the other was Katsushka Hokusai). At the age of fifteen, Hiroshige took the name Utagawa from a school of Japanese artists (see Van Rappard-Boon, p. 51). Despite its title, Hiroshige’s series of prints of views of Edo (Tokyo) included one hundred and nineteen images, of which Van Gogh’s collection included thirteen (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 141). According to Hendriks, Van Gogh may or may not have known that both of the landscape images he chose for adaptation were from the same series (ibid.). They were different sizes. Icons of japonisme: Hendriks uses the term “celèbre” in regard to the images and cites Hiroshige’s reputation as “le plus grand paysagiste” (the greatest landscapist) after Hokusai (Hendriks, in Van Tilborgh and Hendriks, p. 140).

Almond Tree: It is an issue in the literature whether Van Gogh painted Blossoming Almond Tree (F 671 JH 1891) “en plein air” (i.e., outside) or in the studio: that is, whether it represents a detail of a tree seen in situ or a still life of a branch. (See Pickvance, pp. 178-179.) Pickvance comes down solidly on the side of plein air: “Although frequently seen as a still life of cut almond blossoms, such as van Gogh had painted in Arles a year earlier [Blossoming Almond Branch in a Glass with a Book (F 393 JH 1362)], and on this assumption equivalent to the cut sunflowers of Paris [Four Cut Sunflowers (F 452 JH 1330)] or the cut branches of chestnut blossoms from Auvers [Blossoming Chestnut Branches (F 820 JH 2010]), this painting was surely done out of doors. Ignoring the trunk, van Gogh looked up into the tree. This seems confirmed by the gnarled lower horizontal branch that is seen from below.” (ibid., p. 178.) This interpretation presents some practical problems. Could Van Gogh have looked up into a cloudless sky so long and intensely to capture all of the details in the painting? And what are we to make of the painting’s cloudless blue sky in light of Van Gogh’s simultaneous reports on February 19: “A day or two ago I started painting a picture ... of a blue sky with branches full of blossoms standing out against it” (JLB 856, 2/19/1890), and “The last few days we’ve had rather miserable weather here” (JLB 855, 2/19/1890). So, if Van Gogh is to be believed, the sky, at least, was a studio invention. (According to Pickvance, it was also painted last.) The truth of the painting’s creation probably lies somewhere between the two paradigms: a combination of plein-air inspiration and notation followed by studio elaboration and intensification. This even permits for the possibility that, at some point, Van Gogh removed the branch from the tree and brought it into his studio to study it more closely.

The absence of any reference point to the surroundings distinguishes Van Gogh’s painting from one of its obvious pictorial sources, John Peter Russell’s Amandiers en fleur (Almond Trees in Blossom), which Russell painted in Sicily in 1887 (see Galbally, pp. 37-38, and plate xiii). Galbally makes an argument that Russell’s painting was based on his viewing of Van Gogh’s Flowering Plum Tree (F 371 JH 1296), an image copied from a Japanese print that Van Gogh painted at the end of his stay in Paris. But surely this is backwards. At the time Van Gogh painted Blossoming Almond Tree (F 671 JH 1891), he had just resumed his correspondence with Russell after a long silence (JLB 849, 2/1/1890). Almost two years earlier, in April 1888, while painting the orchards in Arles, Van Gogh had expressed particular admiration for the series of paintings that Russell did in the orchards of Sicily in 1887: “As for me I remain enraptured with the scenery here, am working at a series of blooming orchards. And unvoluntarily thought often of you because you did the same in Sicily. I wished you would one day or another, when I shall send over some work to Paris, exchange a Sicilian study with me – in case you should have one to spare.” (JLB 598, 4/19/1888.) One of these “Sicilian studies” was Amandiers en fleur.

Three months later, reporting to Theo on his final correspondence with Russell before the effort at resuscitation in February 1890, Van Gogh still had the exchange for Russell’s orchard paintings on his mind: “ I told Russell that he was perfectly at liberty to take what he might want, and from the first consignment too. And that I was only waiting for a categorical answer to know whether he wanted to choose at his home or yours. That in the first case, if he wanted to see them at his home—you’d send him some orchards too.” (JLB 638, 7/9/1888 or 7/10/1888.) Thus, Blossoming Almond Tree (F 671 JH 1891) can be seen as a tribute, conscious or unconscious, to Russell, in much the same way that Van Gogh’s Ravine (F 662 JH 1804), painted only a few months earlier (in October 1889), was a very conscious tribute to another former friend with whom Van Gogh wished to make amends, Émile Bernard. “I’m working on a large canvas of a ravine; it’s a subject just like the study with a yellow tree that I still have from you, two bases of extremely solid rocks, between which a trickle of water flows, a third mountain that closes off the ravine. These motifs certainly have a beautiful melancholy, and it’s enjoyable to work in really wild sites where you have to bury your easel in the stones so that the wind doesn’t send everything flying to the ground.” (JLB 809, 10/8/1889.) About a month later he tells Theo much the same, saying about his picture that “Bernard really has found perfect things in there” (JLB 816, 11/3/1889). That Van Gogh’s Ravine owed a specific debt to Bernard’s imagery, not just a general one, seems to be confirmed in December 1889 when he forcefully invokes the imagery in question to his sister Wil: “Now you think you remember having seen some rocks by him [Bernard], he’s done a lot of them, and cliffs and beaches in Brittany” (JLB 827, 12/9/1889 or 12/10/1889). Galbally is no doubt correct in locating the common influence on both Van Gogh’s and Russell’s imagery, in 1887 and in 1890, of Japanese prints, as discussed by Chetham (Chetham, pp. 45-46).

“Bleu céleste”: BVG W22, 6/5/1890: The original French is: “J’ai rapporté pour le petit de Theo et Jo un tableau assez grand – qu’ils ont accroché au-dessus du piano—de fleurs d’amandiers blanches – de grandes branches sur un fond bleu céleste …” Context: BVG W22, 6/5/1890: “I brought along a relatively large picture for Theo’s and Jo’s little boy—which they hung over the piano—white almond blossoms—big branches against a sky-blue background …” JLB 879, 6/5/1890: “For Theo and Jo’s little one I brought back a rather large painting—which they’ve hung above the piano—white almond blossoms—big branches on a sky-blue background …”

Notes for the Plates

Tanguy was very good to me: BVG 461, 6/21/1887-9/22/1887 | JLB 571, 7/17/1887-7/19/1887. Hokusai makes you cry out: BVG 533, 9/8/1888 | JLB 676, 9/8/1888. We don’t know enough: BVG 511, 7/15/1888 | JLB 642, 7/15/1888.