Here are just a few photographs from an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, entitled Picturing The West: Yokohama Prints 1859-1870. It was forbidden for Japanese to travel outside Japan and the country was virtually closed to foreigners. In the mid19th century, trade was open with the West, and Westerners started traveling to Japan. Prints were in demand, picturing Westerners, as the Japanese were curious to find out what they were like. Some of the artists didn't actually see the foreigners, but inspired themselves from prints or from hearsay. An example of two cultures meeting and their cross fertilization. In the West the influence of many painters such as Van Gogh and Matisse by Asian art, and particularly Japanese print, is well known. It's interesting to see the reverse, and, as often in this situation, how people can project their fantasies onto the unknown other. I don't know how many American women from the Victorian era would have recognized themselves in the amazon galloping on a fierce horse through the snow, but what a beautiful image of wild femininity! It is in fact astounding to see how the image resembles Art Déco which would flourish decades later. Ironically as the influence from Asian art defined to some extent this early 20th century art movement, the Japanese touch in this depiction of a Western woman produced an Art Déco image before that movement existed.
http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/407.html
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| An American Lady |
American women were often portrayed with this head crown which
might have been inspired by native American head dress.
The images below show European prints which are not part of the Philadelphia Museum exhibit, just to show the interesting parallel between a Japanese print with Western influence, and European prints with Japanese influence.
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An English couple
A Russian couple
A French couple - with a bottle!
An American city
Paris
This blog offers more images and more information about this period:
Contributed by - - Arabella Hutter
