Japonisme and Japanese Influence on Oil Painting

Japonisme refers to the influence of Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) on Western oil painting from the 1860s onward, after Japan opened to trade, Impressionists and Post-Impressionists such as Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec collected Japanese prints and adapted their compositional devices: asymmetrical composition, flattened space, bold outlines, unusual cropping, and everyday subjects, Van Gogh copied Hiroshige prints in oil, translating woodblock color into oil paint, Degas’s ballet compositions use Japanese-style diagonal framing, Mary Cassatt’s mother and child paintings adapt Japanese print compositions, Japanese influence brought oil painting a new way of seeing: less academic, more decorative, more spontaneous, the flat patterns, bold colors and asymmetrical arrangements changed Western painting fundamentally, contemporary oil painters continue to draw on Japanese aesthetics, especially in composition and color, Japonisme shows how oil painting absorbed non-Western traditions and was transformed by them.

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