Japonisme in Britain

Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and nineteenth-century Japan

Ayako Ono

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136625107
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Japan held a profound fascination for western artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the influence of Japonisme on western art was pervasive. Paradoxically, just as western artists were beginning to find inspiration in Japan and Japanese art, Japan was opening to the western world and beginning a process of thorough modernisation, some have said westernisation. The mastery of western art was included in the programme.
This book examines the nineteenth century art world against this background and explores Japanese influences on four artists working in Britain in particular: the American James McNeill Whistler, the Australian Mortimer Menpes, and the 'Glasgow boys' George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hornel. Japonisme in Britian is richly illustrated throughout.

1

JAPONISME

Introduction – Japonisme and Japanese objects

Although a large number of Japanese objects such as ceramics and lacquerware were available during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Europe, it was after the middle of the nineteenth century that the general public started to have opportunities to see and acquire them. Japanese objects could be seen in Britain by the early 1850s. One of the earliest displays would be the ‘Japanese Antiquities’ of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles which had originally been exhibited in London in 1825.¹ Some of them were donated to the British Museum in 1859 by his nephew.²

In 1852, in the report submitted to the President of the Board of Trade, Henry Cole and Richard Redgrave recommended that the ‘educated designer for ceramic manufactures should have an adequate knowledge of what Japan, Meissen, Sevres and even Chelsea have done’.³ In the same year Cole and his associates bought four pieces of Japanese lacquerware from the London art dealer William Hewitt, of Hewitts & Co. in Fenchurch Street, for the South Kensington Museum: three trays and a portable writing desk decorated in coloured shell inlay.⁴ Elizabeth Aslin says that, in 1852, two-thirds of the collection in the Class V, ‘Furniture and Upholstery’, of the Department of Practical Art of South Kensington Museum was either japanned or papier mache and nearly all were directly ascribed to Japan or China.⁵ According to Rupert Faulkner and Anna Jackson, ‘many of the Museum’s early acquisitions of Japanese straw-work, basketry and lacquerwork were chosen for an exhibition of works of decorative art circulated to provincial schools of art in 1855’.⁶

One of the earliest exhibits of Japanese objects was at the Exhibition of Industrial Art of 1853 in Dublin; this was pictured in the Illustrated London News.⁷ Paper lanterns, swords, a blind, a model of a temple and some musical instruments – shamisen (three-stringed Japanese banjo), tsuzumi (hand drum) and biwa (lute) – are seen in the illustration.

In 1854 a ‘Japanese Exhibition’ was held at the Gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, 5 Pall Mall East,⁸ and this was also illustrated in the Illustrated London News.⁹ Many of these objects were purchased by the Science and Art Department of South Kensington Museum.¹⁰ Some bronze vases are displayed on the table in the centre of the section. Some of them are now in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.¹¹ One big cabinet, two medium-size cabinets and one small cabinet can be seen. There are two screens: the motif of the one on the right-hand side is a landscape and that of the other is women. In the latter screen, there are two women who look like geisha. The one on the right wears her kimono loosely and the other is carrying a broom.

According to The Times, the exhibits were the property of a Dutch merchant who had limited trading rights with Japan at Dejima, Nagasaki, and this exhibition was a ‘small but exceedingly interesting collection’.¹² It was said that Japanese objects were ‘more or less adapted to the use of European life’ and ‘Hitherto the extraordinary decorative ability of the eastern nations, and their almost instinctive appreciation of the true principles of form and colour, have been turned to very little account for the purposes of our western civilisation.’¹³ It is quite likely that these objects were undertaken by Japanese craftsmen responding to the demand of Dutch traders.

A series of International exhibitions, which started in 1851 in London and were held in the main European and American cities, played an important part in the spread of Japanese objects. For the western countries it was a confirmation of the triumph of their culture, science and civilisation. At the same time, it was an opportunity to explore the unknown world. The 1862 International Exhibition in London was the first major International Exhibition in which Japan had an independent section. At this point in western eyes, Japan started to have a separate cultural identity from the general category of the ‘Orient’. The majority of the objects in the Japanese section had been collected by Sir Rutherford Alcock while he was in Japan.¹⁴ As Christopher Dresser (1834-1904) said in 1878 in a lecture at the meeting of the Society of Arts:

It was in the year 1862 that I first formed an acquaintance with Japanese art, your Excellency, my chairman [Sir Rutherford Alcock], having in that year brought together a number of objects from this strange country, such as were then altogether new to us ... I need not tell your Excellency that you have the honour of having first made Japanese productions known to the English public.¹⁵

Alcock chaired Dresser’s lecture, but it was not just lip service on Dresser’s part to emphasise Alcock as the first person who collected Japanese objects. Over six hundred objects were displayed and these had a significant impact on the British audience.

The exhibits included textiles, fans, ceramics, lacquerware, ivory carvings, works in straw, idlware and various metal objects of bronze, iron, silver and gold.¹⁶ The collection was classified as follows in the Journal of the Society of Arts:

Specimens of Lacquer-Ware – Lacquering on wood; lacquer and inlaid woods mixed; lacquer on other materials, shells, ivory, tortoise-shell, &c.

Specimens of Straw-Basket Work, and lacquer, and lacquer combined in articles of use and ornament; basket and rattan work.

Specimens of China and Porcelain of every variety, idlled, lacquered and plain; also of pottery and quaint forms of earthenware.

Specimens of Metallurgy and Mineral Products. – Bronzes, simple and inlaid with other metals; medallions and intaglios in pure and mixed metals; brooches, medals, buttons, &c.; cutlery and workmen’s tools; arms and armour.

Manufactures of Paper. – Raw materials; paper for rooms, for writing, for handkerchiefs, for waterproof coats, &c.; imitation leather.

Textile Fabrics. – Silk crapes, silks, tapestry; printed cottons; fabrics from the bark of a creeper.

Works of Art. – Carvings in ivory, wood, paintings, illustrated works, lithochrome prints, &c.

Educational Works and Appliances. – Books of science, scientific models and instruments (chiefly copied from the Dutch), Japanese shells, toys, &c.

There will also be a miscellaneous collection of specimens of lacquer-ware, lacquering on wood, inlaid wood and lacquer mixed.

Lacquer on the Materials, as ivory, shells and tortoise-shell, &c; and inlaid woods.¹⁷

According to the International Exhibition, 1862. Catalogue of Industry and Art, Sent from Japan, items of ‘Works of art, carvings in ivory, wood, paintings, illustrated works, lithochrome prints, &c.’ were as follows (the numbers on the left are from this catalogue):

557. Mussel-shell carved in wood.

558. Fruit carving in bamboo wood. Twenty-five specimens of the best ivory carvings, showing great mastery of the chisel and power of expression.

559. Eight books – specimens of maps, illustrated works, &c.

559A. Twenty-four volumes of ditto.

560. Japanese play bills.

560A. Leaves from a Japanese scholar’s writing exercise.

561. Two boxes of lithochrome printing, on a peculiar fabric of crape paper.

562. Book of fire-brigades in Yedo, with the crests and insignia, detail of city wards, &c.

563. Specimens of figures by a native artist.

564. MapofEdo.

565. Itinerary of the Tokaido, or grand route to all the Imperial Towns.

566. Map of Japan in 66 Provinces (2 vols).

567. Specimens of Japanese lithochrome.

568. Printing of old date; representing a pilgrimage to Fusiyama, the new foreign settlement at Yokohama.

569. 570. Two maps of Fusiyama – the volcanic mountain, with the various stations in the ascent.

571. Further specimens of lithochrome printing, consisting of a great variety of illustrations (200) of the manners, costume and architecture of the Japanese.

572. Specimens of story books – popular literature, written in the Hirakana character for women and children and the less educated classes, as easier to read than the Giosho, or other styles of writing.

572A. Specimen of Japanese official writing – a letter from the Ministers of Foreign Affairs announcing the despatch of a diplomatic mission to England.¹⁸

Items such as maps or a letter are included in the category of ‘works of art’. It is rather disappointing that ukiyo-e, which were an influence on some artists, were not included. Phylis Floyd presumes that nos 565, 566 and 568 are by Hiroshige or Hokusai, because illustrations of Hiroshige and Hokusai’s prints were reproduced in two books: Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China and Japan in the Years 1857, 1858, 1859 by Laurence Oliphant and Japanese Fragments by Sherard Osborn (London, 1861).¹⁹ However, there is no logical connection between these books and the exhibits. It is most uncertain that these are ukiyo-e prints.

Looking through the list of over six hundred items, most of them are objects from Japanese daily life such as ’163. Japanese travelling pillow, imitation leather, with Japanese lock’, or ’237. Specimens of men’s and women’s clogs, used habitually in the streets in bad weather’²⁰ rather than works of art. This suggests that the source of inspiration available for artists at this time was mainly these ordinary daily objects rather than works of art.

An illustration of the Japan section, which adjoined that of Siam, can be seen in the Illustrated London News (Figure 1.1). In this illustration, small objects which should be seen close up are not visible, but they might have been displayed in a small case on the left and a glass case in front. The lanterns could be ’533. Specimens of Japanese lanthorns, made of bamboo and paper, and compressible. The name of the owner, or his arms and crest, are always printed on these.’²¹ Straw raincoats are ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Japonisme
• 2 James McNeill Whistler's Japonisme
• 3 Mortimer Menpes's Visit to Japan The influence of J. McNeill Whistler and Kawanabe Kyôsai
• 4 George Henry and Edward Atkinson Hornel's Visit to Japan and Yokohama Shashin
• Conclusion
• Appendix A
• Appendix B
• Appendix C
• Appendix D
• Appendix E
• Appendix F
• Appendix G
• Appendix H
• Appendix I
• Appendix J
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index