| La parisienne japonaise | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Artist | Alfred Stevens |
| Year | 1872 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 111.8 cm× 77.3 cm(44 in× 30.4 in) |
| Location | La Boverie, Liège |
La parisienne japonaise is an oil on canvas painting by Belgian painter Alfred Stevens. It depicts a young woman in a blue kimono standing in front of a mirror. The painting testifies to Stevens' involvement with Japonisme. Stevens was one of the earliest collectors of Japanese art in Paris. [1]
During the Kaei era (1848–1854), after more than 200 years of seclusion, foreign merchant ships of various nationalities began to visit Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan ended a long period of national isolation and became open to imports from the West, including photography and printing techniques. With this new opening in trade, Japanese art and artifacts began to appear in small curiosity shops in Paris and London. [2] Japonisme began as a craze for collecting Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e. Some of the first samples of ukiyo-e were to be seen in Paris. [3]
The Ukiyo-e became a great influence on painting and the decorative arts. At that time, Japonisme influenced Steven' work, just as James McNeill Whistler's, to whom Stevens was close (Whistler was especially close to Tissot in the 1870s and to Stevens in the 1880s). [4] Starting from the 1860s, paintings by Whistelr's friends Stevens and James Tissot depict European women whose enthralled gazes directed at East Asian objects seem to "invest those objects with uncanny vitality." [5]
Both Stevens and Whistler best expressed this exotic influence in a series of female portraits. [5] La parisienne japonaise is a typical example therof. Almost all objects on display are Japanese and probably come from Stevens's personal collection.
La parisienne japonaise shows a sophisticated woman in an elegantly decorated blue kimono, with a fan in her right hand, standing in front of a mirror in which she looks at herself somewhat absentmindedly.
The mirrored image also gives the viewer an impression of the space in which she is located. A vase of flowers is thus visible via the mirror on the left. The background is relatively empty, and a folding screen behind the young woman prevents from further inquiring into her whereabouts, so that the attention automatically returns to the model and her colorful, exotic dress.
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically the Middle East, was one of the many specialisms of 19th-century academic art, and the literature of Western countries took a similar interest in Oriental themes.
Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e translates as 'picture[s] of the floating world'.
Jacques Joseph Tissot, anglicized as James Tissot, was a French painter and illustrator. He was a successful painter of fashionable, modern scenes and society life in Paris before moving to London in 1871. A friend and mentor of the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas, Tissot also painted scenes and figures from the Bible.
Japonisme is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japonisme was first described by French art critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872.
Alfred Émile Léopold Stevens was a Belgian painter, known for his paintings of elegant modern women. In their realistic style and careful finish, his works reveal the influence of 17th-century Dutch genre painting. After gaining attention early in his career with a social realist painting depicting the plight of poor vagrants, he achieved great critical and popular success with his scenes of upper-middle class Parisian life. He tended to use the same models over and over again, and not all of them were aristocratic. "At least three of his frequent models can be identified in the infamous Book of the Courtesans, a top secret leather bound book containing the surveillance files of the Paris vice squad," writes author Summer Brennan.
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Completed in 1871, Nocturne: Blue and Silver – Chelsea is a painting by James McNeill Whistler. It is the earliest of the London Nocturnes and was conceived on the same August evening as Variations in Violet and Green. The two paintings were exhibited together at the Dudley Gallery.
Symphony in White, No. 3, is a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The work shows two women, one sitting on a sofa dressed in white, and the other resting on the floor, with a yellowish dress. The model on the sofa is Joanna Heffernan, the artist's mistress. By calling the painting Symphony in White, No. 3, Whistler intended to emphasise his artistic philosophy of corresponding arts, inspired by the poet Charles Baudelaire. The presence of a fan on the floor shows the influence of Japonisme, which was a popular artistic trend in European art at the time. Whistler was also greatly influenced by his colleague and friend Albert Joseph Moore, and their works show considerable similarities.
Japonaiserie was the term used by Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh to express the influence of Japanese art on his works.
Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain is a painting by American-born artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It was painted between 1863 and 1865. The painting currently hangs above the fireplace in The Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, Gustave Léonard De Jonghe or Gustave de Jonghe was a Flemish painter known for his glamorous society portraits and genre scenes. After training in Brussels, he started out as a painter of historical and religious subjects in a Realist style. After moving to Paris where he spent most of his active career, he became successful with his scenes of glamorous women in richly decorated interiors.
Plum Park in Kameido is a woodblock print in the ukiyo-e genre by the Japanese artist Hiroshige. It was published in 1857 as the thirtieth print in the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series and depicts Prunus mume trees in bloom.
Frans Verhas or Franz Verhas was a Belgian painter. He is known for his portraits and genre scenes of women and children set in luxurious bourgeois homes. His elaborate salon interiors are characterised by their rich abundance and the display of a wide range of textures, such as tapestries, satins, furs, marbles and metals. Frans Verhas also painted animals, history paintings and still lifes.
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La Japonaise is a 1876 oil painting by the French Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Painted on a 231.8 cm × 142.3 cm canvas, the full-length portrait depicts a European woman in a red uchikake kimono standing in front of a wall decorated by Japanese fans. Monet's first wife Camille Doncieux modeled for the painting.
The Parisian Sphinx is an oil on canvas painting by Belgian painter Alfred Stevens. Painted between 1875 and 1877, it depicts a dreamy young woman gently supporting her head with her hand. The painting is part of the permanent collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The Parisian Sphinx shows the influence of Vermeer and the other Netherlandish old masters on Stevens, and testifies to the Symbolist influence in the latter's day. It incorporates a harmonious juxtaposition of superficial Dutch realism with the spreading Symbolist manner, as opposed to the bottom-up, pluralistic symbolism of the declining Romanticism. While well executed and apparently quite realistic, the painting has also a non-plain meaning.
The Psyché is an oil on panel painting by the Belgian artist Alfred Stevens. Painted in circa 1871, the painting once belonged to Robert de Montesquiou, and is currently housed at the Princeton University Art Museum located in Princeton, New Jersey.
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