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The Western Image of Japanese Art in the Late Edo Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Toshio Watanabe
Affiliation:
City of Birmingham Polytechnic

Extract

These are two very different assessments of Japanese art and artists both published in London during the 1860s. We may argue that both comments are ill-conceived and prejudiced; yet both in their own way are characteristic Western reactions of the time. In this paper I should like to explore the Western image of Japanese art during the period from 1853 to 1867.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 Rossetti, William Michael, Fine Art, Chiefly Contemporary (London, 1867), pp. 386–7.Google Scholar

2 Osborn, Sherard, Japanese Fragments (London, 1861), p. 79.Google Scholar

3 Goncourt, Edmond et Jules de, Journal, ed. Ricatte, Robert, vol. 1 (Monaco, 1956), p. 962.Google Scholar

4 Waring, J. B. (ed.), Masterpieces of Industrial Art and Sculpture at the International Exhibition 1862, 3 vols (London, 1863), vol. III, pls 248, 267, 282, 288.Google Scholar

5 See ibid., text for pl. 267. The British Consul at Kanagawa, Captain F. Howard Vyse, also sent in some items.

6 Adburgham, Alison, Liberty's. A Biography of a Shop (London, 1975), p. 13.Google Scholar

7 Liberly's 1875–1975 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1975), p. 6.Google Scholar

8 The complicated story of various shops is best summarized by Weisberg, Gabriel P. in Japonisme. Japanese Influence on French Art 1854–1910 (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1975), pp. 34.Google Scholar

9 Eidelberg, Martin, ‘Bracquemond, Delâtre and the discovery of Japanese prints’, Burlington Magazine, no. 937 (04 1981), pp. 220–7.Google Scholar However, the present writer does not agree with Eidelberg about the date of the ‘discovery’ of Hokusai Manga by Bracquemond being 1856 and proposed 1859 as a more likely date in a paper entitled ‘Early Whistler and Japonism’ given at the London Conference of the Association of Art Historians on 6 April 1981.

10 Sutton, Denys, Nocturne: The Art of James McNeill Whistler (London, 1963), p. 47.Google Scholar

11 Good examples of this discussion can be found in SirAlcock, Rutherford, The Capital of the Tycoon, 2 vols (London, 1863), vol. I, pp. 312–13Google Scholar or De Fonblanque, Edward Barrington, Niphon and Pe-che-li (London, 1862), pp. 4751.Google Scholar The latter is a most delightful and readable book often including remarkably perceptive and open-minded comments.

12 Segi, Shinichi, ‘Meiji izen ni okeru ukiyoe no kaigai ryūshutsu’, Ukiyo-e Art, no. 24 (1969). PP. 21–2.Google Scholar

13 Kobayashi, Taichirō, Hokusai lo Doga (Kyōto, 1974), p. 246.Google Scholar

14 Eidelberg, , ‘Bracquemond’. This important article includes illustrations of the relevant plates and the Japanese originals. See also Japonisme, pp. 142–3.Google Scholar

15 This was first noticed by Taichirō Kobayashi as early as 1938 in an article published in Kokka. This was kindly pointed out to me by Prof. Chūji Ikegami. Kobayashi, Hokusai to Doga, p. 279. Ikegami, Chūji, ‘Pōru Gōgan to nihon kaiga’, Bijutsushi, no. 65 (June 1967), p. 3Google Scholar (with French summary); de Caso, Jacques, ‘1861: Hokusai rue Jacob’, Burlington Magazine, no. 111 (September 1969), pp. 562–3.Google Scholar

16 Kobayashi, , Hokusai to Doga, p. 279.Google Scholar

17 Oliphant, Laurence, Narrative of the Earl of Elgin's Mission to China and Japan in the years 1857, '58, '59, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1859)Google Scholar; Osborn, Sherard, ‘Japanese Fragments’, Once a Week (1860), pp. 33–7, 110–12, 157–61, 201–5, 260–7, 313–16, 383–8, 437–45.Google Scholar

18 Hawks, Francis L., Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan (Washington, 1856).Google Scholar

19 Facsimiles of Japanese prints, this time taken from an illustrated book, appear also in the issues of 3 January 1857, Supplement pp. 679–80.Google Scholar

20 Not Toranomon Yūkei as in Segi, ‘Meiji izen ni okeru ukiyoe no kaigai ryūshutsu’, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

21 Yoshida, Mitsukuni, Ryōyō no me (Tokyo, 1978), p. 100Google Scholar; Ikegami, Chūji, ‘Bakumatsu nihon e no ryokōki’, Yamato Bunka, no. 69 (September 1981), p. 19.Google Scholar

22 One of the two illustrations, credited as being taken from Japanese sketches in Fortune, Robert, Yedo and Peking (London, 1863), p. 28Google Scholar, is in fact also by Hiroshige, Izu no sanchū from the series Fuji Sanjūrokkei.

23 Suzuki, Jūzō, ‘Hiroshige no shōgai to gagyō’, Hiroshige, Shiriizu Taiyō no. 3 (Tokyo, 1975), p. 48–9.Google Scholar

24 First identified as coming from this series by Strange, Edward F., The Colour-Prints of Hiroshige (London, 1925), p. 126.Google Scholar The present writer discussed the influence of Hiroshige prints on Whistler's etchings before 1864 in the paper referred to in note 9. He suggests that Hiroshige prints may have been available to Whistler even before the 1862 International Exhibition.

25 For example, Smith, George, Ten Weeks in Japan (London, 1861), p. 254.Google Scholar

26 See also p. 234, where again the roof of Hachimangū in Kamakura is considered as being ‘remarkable in form’.

27 Osborn, Sherard, A Cruise in Japanese Waters (Edinburgh and London, 1859), p. 40.Google Scholar

28 According to Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Peter Paul Duggan (1810–61) was an artist born in Ireland and active in New York, principally working in crayon drawing, who spent his last few years in London and Paris. It is tempting to speculate on whether Duggan had met and given some information about Japanese art to other artists during his stay in London and Paris.

29 All Japanese items in the Illustrated London News between 1853 and 1902 are to be found in Japanese translation in Kanai, Madoka (ed., transl.), Egakareta Bakumatsu Meiji (Tokyo, 1973).Google Scholar

30 Crépet, Jacques (ed.), Correspondance générale de Charles Baudelaire, vol. 4Google Scholar of Oeuvres Complètes de Charles Baudelaire (Paris, 1948), p. 34.Google Scholar

31 Leighton, John, On Japanese Art (London, 1863).Google Scholar The present writer would be interested to hear of the existence of a copy other than the one in the Victoria and Albert Museum Library.

32 Aslin, Elizabeth, The Aesthetic Movement (London, 1969), p. 81.Google Scholar