Japonisme: New Perspectives from the Land of the Rising Sun

Japan’s borders were largely closed to outsiders for centuries until 1854, when the country was opened to trade and travel. Japanese goods hit markets across Europe and America, sparking an international craze known as “Japonisme.”

Artists seeking to defy European conventions saw new possibilities in Japanese art and a visual language that changed the West, shaping Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and Art Nouveau, among many other avant-garde styles and movements.

Central to the exhibition is a newly acquired painting by Lilla Cabot Perry, an artist who stood at the nexus of French Impressionism, Impressionism in the United States, and Japanese art. Perry played a pivotal role in cross-cultural exchanges between these groups, first introducing American audiences to French Impressionism and later connecting Japanese and American artists. As Perry traveled between the U.S. and France (where she lived next door to Claude Monet), she brought paintings and fresh ideas back with her, becoming a vital conduit for Americans to see and embrace the revolutionary new style of painting known as Impressionism.

Over 60 paintings, prints, and decorative arts highlight the connections between Japanese art and American and European art from the period 1860 to 1920. Dozens of Japanese woodblock prints from artists including Utagawa Hiroshige, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Utagawa Kunisada, and gilded and painted Japanese screens from the 18th and 19th centuries join works by William Merritt Chase, Julia Bracewell Folkard, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Winslow Homer, Max Weber, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler to show the diverse ways Japanese art influenced artists of the West—and in some cases, how Japanese artists borrowed back from the West.

IMAGES:

Utagawa Kunisada, Courtesan, c. 1850-64. Color woodcut. Gift of Marson, Ltd., Baltimore, 1979.8.

Lilla Cabot Perry, The Gold Screen, 1914. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase, Taber Art Fund, 2022.18.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Mount Fuji on the Left near Yoshiwara, from Fifty-three Stations on the Takaido Road, 1833-34. Color woodcut. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Gussman, 1980.9.219.

Julia Bracewell Folkard, How to be Happy though Single, c. 1891. Oil on canvas. Museum purchase, Taber Art Fund, 2024.14.

Kano Sokuyo, Two panel screen, one of a pair, 1716-36 (detail). Watercolor, gold leaf, wood, netal, and lacquer on paper. Gift of Mrs. Joe D. Price, 1966.27.4.

William Merritt Chase, The Blue Kimono, 1915. Oil on canvas. Gift of Laura A. Clubb, 1947.8.1.