Who Was the Discoverer of Japanese Prints in France? A Race of Egos and Little Lies
- Art d'Histoire
- May 28
- 5 min read
1854. Isolationist Japan is threatened by the American cannons of Commodore Matthew Perry. The Empire of the Rising Sun bows and agrees to trade with the United States, followed immediately by European countries. A large number of Japanese objects then begin to flow in.
The fact remains that the presence of japoneries or japonaiseries does not alone explain the recognition of their artistic value. It still had to be aesthetically accepted as a work of art and no longer as a simple ethnic curiosity.
From this sprang a long imbroglio between all those claiming to be the first to have discovered the aesthetic value of images coming from Japan.
A Brief Diplomatic Reminder
Japan had been isolated from the rest of the world for several centuries—let us say since 1633. This isolation was, in reality, only relative, hindered by the Japanese desire to know Western sciences.
At the beginning of the 16th century, they traded with the Portuguese and the Dutch. The Portuguese, manifesting an unwelcome religious proselytism, were brutally excluded in the following century. Only the Dutch remained to maintain an exchange space on the narrow artificial island of Dejima, at the entrance to Nagasaki.
Now, while Japanese decorative objects—wrapped not in vulgar paper but in prints—entered European markets through this narrow channel, they were not particularly sought after. Hence, the fact that the collections of these curiosities belonging to Isaac Titsingh—former director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) with access to Dejima—were auctioned upon his death in 1812, did not ignite the auction room in the slightest. Similarly, the Japanese collections of the ethnographic museum in Leiden did not attract crowds, nor even Vincent van Gogh, who lived a few kilometres away.
These images did not yet interest anyone. It would take the combination of their mass entry and the newfound interest of artists in this imagery for fervour and Japonisme to be born. There remains one question: who first took an interest, if indeed there was a first person and an epiphany?
The Battle for Primacy: Between Literary Falsification and Personal Mythology
The desire to establish themselves as pioneers of Japonisme pushed the Goncourts and perhaps Monet to arrange history.
1851. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt claimed in 1884 to have been the first to appreciate the arts of Japan, based on the description of a Japoniste interior they gave in their first novel, En..., published in 1851. True, but for one detail: the original text refers to Chinese porcelain and not Japanese; in its 1884 reissue, the piece becomes Japanese... The priority is fictitious; it is a rewriting.
1856. Claude Monet, in an interview given at the end of his life, recounted buying his first prints from a curiosity merchant, a second-hand dealer in Le Havre, as early as 1856, at the age of sixteen, amidst monkeys and parrots.
But while Monet did indeed encounter these images and bought some, they did not alter his way of working until the 1870s.
On the other hand, in 1871—Japonisme had not yet found its name, but the influence of Japanese arts was already well established in Paris thanks to tea and Japanese-object boutiques like that of Louise Desoye on the Rue de Rivoli—Monet made a happy discovery in the spring or summer.
During a stay in the Dutch town of Zaandam—the young painter, returning from his London exile during the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, passed through Holland—he stumbled upon Japanese prints by chance.
Several people would testify to this adventure, but it was Octave Mirbeau who gave the most vivid version, reinventing the dialogue between Monet and the Zaandam grocer who used Japanese engravings as paper to wrap his foodstuffs. Unlike the soft tonal progressions of Western engraving, they presented flat areas of colour with tonal vivacity; as for the compositions, they defied all academic rules. Monet was captivated.
He acquired the entire lot, including depictions of women at their toilets or herds of hinds signed by masters such as Utamaro, Hokusai, and Korin. He would soon be a great collector himself.
The First Discoverer
While some cite the name of the writer and art critic Théophile Gautier as one of the very first discoverers of Japanese arts, the primacy and especially the application of Japanese artistic principles would rather belong to the engraver Félix Bracquemond.
Paris, 1856. Bracquemond, two years before the signing of the commercial treaty between France and Japan.
René Delorme in 1880, followed by Léonce Bénédite in 1905, recount that while visiting a packer (for the former) or the printer Delâtre (for the latter), Bracquemond happened upon a flexible red-covered volume, initially intended to cushion the impact of imported porcelain; the year was 1856.
The booklet turned out to be a manga, or rather one of the famous sketchbooks of the Japanese master Hokusai. The exceptionally lively line captivated Bracquemond, who had to wait long months before he could buy it back from the engraver Lavieille, who had acquired it in the meantime. From then on, he never left it, keeping it in his pocket, ready to show it to anyone who wanted to open their eyes to these Japanese wonders. He drew inspiration from it for the decoration of porcelain services a decade later.
The London Network
Initiated into Japanese aesthetics in Paris, the American James McNeill Whistler spread this new interest to his London friends and colleagues, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William, as soon as he settled in the English capital in 1859. Together, these enthusiasts frequently visited specialised boutiques and also sourced supplies in Paris from Louise Desoye, affectionately nicknamed La Japonaise by Whistler.
As with many discoveries, there was no single big bang, no single point of arrival. Deborah Johnson points out that Japanese prints were circulating commonly in London as early as the 1840s. But these graphic images then had only derisory value and were offered to customers to accompany the purchase of a pound of tea.
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