Edgar Degas in the era of Japonisme

Impressionist artist Edgar Degas was known foremost as a painter and pastelist through much of his career, but he was also a skilled and prolific printmaker. Over the course of nearly four decades, Degas produced 66 graphic works and around 400 impressions of his prints.[1] Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre of 1879–1880, currently on view in Impressionism and Beyond (Gallery 235 and the Sidney S. and Sadie M. Cohen Gallery 234), is one of the finest examples of Degas’s admiration for Japanese art and his engagement with the stylistic qualities of Japanese prints.

Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre depicts Degas’s close friend and artistic collaborator, the American expatriate artist Mary Cassatt, walking through a gallery of paintings in the Louvre Museum in Paris.[2] Cassatt’s sister, Lydia, is seated by the entryway holding a book and looking toward the wall of paintings.[3] A wide marble doorjamb frames the left side of the print, partially obscuring the figures of Mary and Lydia Cassatt.

Several stylistic elements of The Paintings Gallery reflect Degas’s interest in Japanese prints and the general prominence of japonisme in the Impressionist group. The term japonisme, first coined by art critic Philippe Burty in 1872, refers to “the craze for Japanese art and design that swept France and elsewhere after trade with Japan resumed in the 1850s.”[4] In France, growing interest in Japanese art and culture influenced countless artists to appropriate formal qualities of Japanese art for use in their own work and inspired them to see the world in new ways.[5] Late 19th-century artists like Degas and Cassatt admired Japanese prints for their flat fields of color and patterns, innovative framing devices, and asymmetrical compositions. Ukiyo-e prints, or “pictures of the Floating World,” from the Edo period (1615–1868) were especially popular among Western artists; Degas, for instance, had a personal collection of ukiyo-e prints.[6] There were many affinities between the pleasures and entertainments of modern Paris and Edo’s Floating World: the red-light districts of Montmartre in Paris and Yoshiwara in Tokyo (formerly Edo), the theatrical performances at the Opéra and the Folies-Bergère cabaret in Paris and at kabuki theaters in Tokyo and Kyoto, and leisurely activities like strolling through the Louvre or attending a play.[7]

Degas frequently quoted the stylistic and formal qualities of Japanese prints in his own graphic work, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in The Paintings Gallery. The size and elongated vertical shape of The Paintings Gallery is similar to the standard size and shape of Japanese chu-tanzaku prints.[8] This is the only etching that Degas produced in this narrow format, making it a notable stylistic development within his body of work. In SLAM’s collection, Ferry Landing on the Sumida River, from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital, by Utagawa Hiroshige exemplifies the chu-tanzaku format that Degas emulates in his own print. Other stylistic elements adapted from imagery of the Floating World include the juxtaposition of a standing figure and a seated figure, the strong diagonal line of Mary Cassatt’s extended right arm and umbrella, and the subject of women taking part in a public leisure activity.[9] The use of a marble doorjamb to frame the left side of the image is drawn from ukiyo-e prints as well.[10] This stylistic element is featured prominently in Kinryūzan Temple, Asakusa, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo by Hiroshige.

Degas assimilated the visual language of ukiyo-e prints into his own artistic style, demonstrating his active participation in cross-cultural exchanges occurring between France and Japan. Some other artists, however, trafficked in exoticizing imagery characterized as japoniste tendencies. Henri Rivière, for example, mimicked the style of red seals and cartouche signatures seen on many ukiyo-e prints in his own appropriative japoniste monograms. One such monogram—of many that Rivière used in his career—can be seen in Funeral with Umbrellas, currently on view in the exhibition.[11] Pseudo-Japanese characters often appeared in japoniste artworks, allowing artists to imitate the appearance of Japanese prints despite their inability to read or write in Japanese. Félix-Hilaire Buhot, for example, published an album of 10 etchings in 1883 titled Japonisme, Dix Eaux-Fortes (Ten Etchings), in which the seventh plate features a cartouche on the upper left filled with invented Japanese characters (Cavalier Bronze, between 1874 and 1885, Detroit Institute of Arts).[12] Though other prints in this album include real Japanese characters, Helen Burnham suggests that these characters were “transcribed by a hand illiterate in Japanese, presumably Buhot’s.”[13]

Degas’s approach to Japanese prints was indirect by comparison. His quotations from ukiyo-e prints are easily recognizable on stylistic grounds, but any attempt to mimic the minutiae of ukiyo-e titles, signatures, and stamps is notably absent.

Cassatt also fostered an appreciation for Japanese art. She was especially enamored with colorful ukiyo-e prints of women in interior scenes that captured moments of their daily lives, such as those by Kitagawa Utamaro. Though Cassatt was just beginning her first serious foray into printmaking when Degas produced The Paintings Gallery, her close collaboration with Degas at that time led her to continue making prints for more than a decade.[14] In April 1890 Cassatt attended an exhibition of Japanese color woodblock prints at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. This exhibition inspired her to produce a series of 10 color aquatints influenced by Japanese prints, including Afternoon Tea Party of 1891, also on view in the exhibition.[15] Using color aquatint, drypoint, and selective additions of gold paint, Cassatt depicted two women conversing in close quarters over tea and food. The muted, flat fields of color, patterned curtains in the background, and the scene of women conducting a daily activity are all derived from the ukiyo-e prints that so inspired Cassatt.

Though both Degas’s and Cassatt’s interest in Japanese prints was waning by the end of the 19th century, they continued to rely and reflect upon Japanese print aesthetics throughout their careers. Degas’ Mary Cassatt in the Paintings Gallery at the Louvre is not only a masterful technical achievement but also a testament to his thoughtful and enduring engagement with Japanese ukiyo-e prints of the Edo period.