Summary of the September 11 Lecture
As our President had not yet returned from overseas, the September meeting
was chaired by Vice-President Ronald Suleski. In making his announcements
Dr. Suleski drew attention to the forthcoming guided tour of the exhibition
of Shokokuji treasures at the Nezu Museum, arranged for September 30th,
and also invited all those present to stay on afterwards and partake of
wine remaining from stocks donated by Amway.
As our speaker on this occasion we were fortunate to have Professor Toshio
Watanabe who stepped in at the last minute to replace the scheduled speaker,
who was unable to keep his engagement. Prof. Watanabe, who is an authority
on Japonisme, was on his way from London to Washington to speak at the Freer
Gallery on "Whistler and Japan" in connection with the recent
retrospective on the American artist James McNeill Whistler in London, Paris
and Washington, and was able to give us an aural preview. Among the very
varied audience was Mrs. Kitamura, wife of Ambassador Kitamura who when
he was ambassador in London officially attended the exhibition "Japan
and Britain: An Aesthetic Dialogue, 1850-1930", organized by Prof.
Watanabe in 1991.
In his examination of the Japanese influences on the work of Whistler, Prof.
Watanabe began by discussing the various evaluations of Whistler's art,
and of Japonisme in general. Up to the 1960s Whistler had been regarded
as an Impressionist, notably on the strength of his picture "Symphony
in White, No. 1: The White Girl", dated 1862, but, although he was
a friend of the Paris Impressionists, his way of handling colour was quite
different. Also he then moved from Paris to London, where the dominant schools
were those of the Royal Academy and the Pre-Raphaelites, but his work did
not fit into these contexts either. So from the 1970s Whistler's art came
to be viewed within its own context, and the last ten years have seen a
deeper understanding of his work. At the same time there has been a deepening
of the understanding of Japonisme, with a tendency to look at the image
of Japanese art held in the West rather than the stylistic influence, and
a resultant change in the view of Whistler's Japonisme in particular.
Professor Watanabe then proceeded to discuss Whistler's Japonisme, dividing
it into four phases and illustrating his remarks with pairs of slides. During
the first phase, from 1860 to 1863, his pictures did not include any Japanese
motifs, but it was possible to detect the influence of Japanese composition,
suggesting that Japanese prints were already known in artistic circles in
Paris by this time, although we have no evidence that Whistler actually
owned any prints until the end of this period. In an etching called "The
Punt", dated 1861, the asymmetry, with the punt suddenly protruding
into the picture, is very striking, and recalls a print by Hiroshige. Similarly,
another etching, "The Little Pool", shows a river bend with a
high viewpoint, a device frequently used by Hiroshige. Also one of the prints
of this picture has a triangular addition sketched on to it in crayon, recalling
a Hiroshige print with a similar triangular intrusion. A comparable influence
of Japanese composition can be seen in his paintings, particularly "Harmony
in Green and Rose: The Music Room", in which the strongly silhouetted
figure of Miss Boott bears a strong resemblance to that of the geisha in
Eishi's "Itsuhana".
We can see from this that already by 1860 Whistler was using devices which
could only have come from Japanese sources, and also, more importantly,
that he was influenced by Japanese pictorial principles before he started
to include Japanese objects in his paintings. This is directly contrary
to the widely accepted notion of Whistler's Japonisme, first suggested by
John Sandberg in 1964, and the theory that an interest in japonaiserie was
a necessary antecedent of Japonisme - that the adoption of Japanese motifs
preceded the assimilation of Japanese pictorial devices. Further, we can
see that in adopting Japanese forms of composition Whistler, like other
artists, was selecting elements that fitted his artistic development at
the time rather than changing his style completely. Finally, we should note
the special influence of Hiroshige, some of whose prints Whistler certainly
owned by 1864. This is because Hiroshige's prints, many of them cityscapes
with a river, offered elements that were especially useful to Whistler,
and also his prints were the most widely available at the time. By contrast,
Hokusai's prints, often of birds, animals and human figures, were not of
particular interest to Whistler, further evidence pointing to the selectivity
of the Western artist.
If we accept that Whistler was employing Japanese pictorial devices already
in his first phase, this will necessarily influence our approach to his
second, "Oriental", phase. Sandberg has held that the painting
"Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks", regarded
as the earliest of Whistler's Japanese pictures (though he was clearly working
on at least one other picture at the time), is merely a conventional Victorian
genre scene with a few exotic accessories, and that it was only with difficulty
that Whistler was absorbing Far Eastern influences into his previous style.
This picture is generally regarded as making "no attempt at Oriental
pose or composition", but this is not in fact so. Among other things,
it has the slanting floor, peculiar perspective and diagonal emphasis seen
before in his prints, and also the division of bright and dark areas behind
the central figure, as in "The Music Room", all elements that
set it apart from the average Victorian genre painting and point to Japanese
models. An even clearer example of Japanese influence is seen in the fact
that he encloses his signature and the date in vertical rectangles, as in
a Japanese print, with the letters also written vertically. Moreover the
female figure is exaggeratedly elongated, reclining in a diagonal pose and
engaged in an artistic activity, recalling some of Eishi's prints with a
similar diagonal emphasis and containing figures similarly engaged. Whistler's
incorporation of Chinese blue and white vases in the picture is not entirely
successful, but his use of Japanese pictorial devices is undeniable
His other painting of the same period, "La Princesse du pays de la
porcelaine", has a similar unnatural viewpoint with a slanting floor
and an elongated figure. In the perspective one can see a hint of Japanese
parallel perspective; the Japanese fan gives the effect of a picture within
a picture, a favourite Japanese device, and the other Japanese objects in
the picture are cut off in the middle, a very common device in later Japonisme.
Above all, the central figure evokes an "ukiyoe" beauty as seen
in prints of the late 18th-century Kansei period.
All Whistler's "Oriental" paintings, which, as we have seen include
Japanese pictorial principles as well as Japanese objects, were executed
between 1863 and 1865. At this point Whistler was a close friend of Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, and was influenced by his strong personality. This is
seen in the fact that his "Oriental" paintings depict beautiful
women in Far Eastern costume, surrounded by exotic Far Eastern paraphernalia
in strong colours, just as Rossetti painted beautiful women in luxurious
dress in an imaginary environment. At this time Rossetti was interested
in prints of Japanese women in highly decorative clothing, and under his
influence Whistler became oriented towards the "ukiyoe" prints
rather than Hiroshige's landscapes. His indebtedness to Eishi, Utamaro and
Kiyonaga is especially noticeable, perhaps because these were the only prints
then available as models. There is one painting of Whistler's from this
period in which the influences of French Realism, the Pre-Raphaelites and
Japan are harmoniously combined. This is "Symphony in White, No. 2:
The Little White Girl" of 1864. Here we can see Whistler's originality
in his use of asymmetry; the model is standing sideways on, but her reflection
in the mirror is full-face, and there is a Japanese-style flowering branch
which is not reflected.
The third phase of Whistler's Japonisme is the period from 1865 to the early
1870s. In it he uses lighter brush strokes and more subdued colours; Japanese
pictorial devices are still used, and Japanese fans and umbrellas still
appear, but they are used more to evoke an aesthetic mood rather than a
Far Eastern environment. Many of the female figures are now dressed in the
classical manner, rather than in kimonos, and one such example is "The
Symphony in White and Red", in which elongated beauties parade on a
narrow strip in a manner reminiscent of Kiyonaga. Whistler's new interest
in classical art came from his encounter with Albert Moore, and this was
an experimental period for him.
The fourth and last phase of Whistler's Japonisme is the period after the
early 1870s, of which the most striking example is the famous painting "Nocturne:
Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge" from about 1872-77. The debt
this picture owes to Hiroshige is well-known, and the combination of the
two colours is similar to that in Hiroshige's "Moonlight at Ryogoku".
Whistler also participated in design projects, such as the "Peacock
Room" of 1877, now in the Freer Gallery, in which he uses a pattern
very like the Japanese "blue sea wave" pattern.
In conclusion, Prof. Watanabe drew on Whistler's own words to elucidate
his attitude towards art, and Japan's place in it. Whistler upheld that
art should appeal simply to the eye and ear, unconfounded with other emotions.
Beauty transcended history and geography; it was not evolutionary, not bound
by either time or place. In comparing a noble Greek sculpture and a humble
Japanese fan, Whistler insisted that beauty should be judged only by its
own criteria. This is art for art's sake par excellence. When he equates
the marbles of the Parthenon with a Hokusai fan we can see that for him
Japanese art represented the epitome of beauty.
Following this presentation, and a scattering of questions, Dr. Suleski
called upon Fr. Thomas Immoos to give the vote of thanks; it turned out
that his special qualifications for so doing were that Prof. Watanabe had
once been a student of his at Sophia University!
Adapted from "The
Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 8", October 1995, compiled by
Hugh Wilkinson.
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