| 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 of the Eastern world by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East, was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.
Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that 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, better known as James Tissot, was a French painter, illustrator, and caricaturist. He was born to a drapery merchant and a milliner and decided to pursue a career in art at a young age, coming to incorporate elements of realism, early Impressionism, and academic art into his work. He is best known for a variety of genre paintings of contemporary European high society produced during the peak of his career, which focused on the people and women's fashion of the Belle Époque and Victorian England, but he would also explore many medieval, biblical, and Japoniste subjects throughout his life. His career included work as a caricaturist for Vanity Fair under the pseudonym of Coïdé.
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.
Victorine-Louise Meurent was a French painter and a model for painters. Although she is best known as the favorite model of Édouard Manet, she was an artist in her own right who regularly exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. In 1876, her paintings were selected for inclusion at the Salon's juried exhibition, when Manet's work was not.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, created in late 1831 during the Edo period of Japanese history. The print depicts three boats moving through a storm-tossed sea, with a large, cresting wave forming a spiral in the centre and Mount Fuji visible in the background.
The Anglo-Japanese style developed in the United Kingdom through the Victorian era and early Edwardian era from approximately 1851 to the 1910s, when a new appreciation for Japanese design and culture influenced how designers and craftspeople made British art, especially the decorative arts and architecture of England, covering a vast array of art objects including ceramics, furniture and interior design. Important centres for design included London and Glasgow.
Symphony in White, No. 3, is a painting by James 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 emphasize 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.
Ella Augusta "Eleanor" Norcross was an American painter who studied under William Merritt Chase and Alfred Stevens. She lived the majority of her adult life in Paris, France, as an artist and collector and spent the summers in her hometown of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Norcross painted Impressionist portraits and still lifes, and is better known for her paintings of genteel interiors.
Rose and Silver: The Princess from the Land of Porcelain is an oil painting on canvas by American-born artist James McNeill Whistler. It was painted between 1863 and 1865. It 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.
Shinagawa no Tsuki, Yoshiwara no Hana, and Fukagawa no Yuki are three hanging-scroll paintings corresponding to the themes of "moon", "flowers", and "snow", respectively. These were produced in the late 18th century by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro for the prominent merchant Zenno Ihē.
Kasen Koi no Bu is a series of five ukiyo-e prints designed by the Japanese artist Utamaro and published c. 1793–94.
The Gallery of HMS 'Calcutta' (Portsmouth), also known as Officer and Ladies on Board HMS Calcutta, is an 1876 oil painting by the French artist James Tissot. It depicts two ladies in fashionable clothing and a young naval lieutenant, standing on the quarter gallery at the stern of the Royal Navy warship HMS Calcutta. The Tate Gallery in London holds the painting and measures 68.6 by 91.8 centimetres (27.0 in × 36.1 in).
La Japonaise is an 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.
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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