Japonisme! : Manet and Japanese Art

        Édouard Manet was a man of his time, and he loved representing his time and place, 19th century France, in his art. He is particularly known for being disputedly the first of the modernists or the last of the traditionalists, and for his friendship with Monet and Renoir, fellow, younger impressionists. Among many major influences on his work was photography, then newly developed, which was able to capture a fleeting moment in time, a principle which the impressionists sought to communicate with their art, and cropping subjects on the picture plane, which previously was not prevalent in western art. The fashion of the time was also a major influence , which Manet himself was serious about as evidenced by his own tasteful dress and his habit of shopping for the latest fashions for his female models to wear in his paintings. There is even a particular white hat with black ribbons that shows up in a few of his paintings, including Boating, 1874, The Swallows, 1873, and On the Beach, 1873, in case you questioned his love for pretty accessories.

        Another major influence on Manet, and other impressionists in the latter half of the 19th century, was Japanese art. Having recently been opened to trade with the west, Japanese screens, fans, umbrellas, wood block prints, and other items were becoming fashionable and available to own in France. In particular, woodblock prints bore influence on compositional strategies as well as subject matter of the impressionists and Manet, with at least one scholar arguing that Manet took inspiration from the subject matter of courtesans in Japanese woodblock prints for his painting, Olympia, which famously depicts a higher class prostitute. Typical of Manet’s work are a flattened, graphic quality, a high horizon line that tilts the scene forward and compresses space, and strong, often diagonal, a-symmetrical compositions, all of which are also hallmarks of Japanese woodblock prints, called ukiyo-e.

Édouard Manet, Boating, 1874, Oil on canvas, 38 ¼ x 51 ¼ in., Object Number: 29.100.115.

 

Boating was painted during the summer of 1874 in Gennevilliers during a summer Manet spent with Monet and Renoir. In this painting, Manet adopts his friends’ brighter color palette and looser brushstrokes, with the truest impressionistic brush work happening in the blue of the woman’s dress. Manet’s painting, while asymmetrical, is a beautifully balanced composition of simple elements; the boat, the man, the woman, and the water. Manet employs a high horizon line, allowing the water below to fill the entire background, flattening out the picture in a graphic manner.

Utigawa Kunisada, Edo period (1615-1868), Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 14 ⅛ x 9 ⅞ in, Object Number: JP1092.9 

 

This artwork is a Japanese woodblock print from the Edo Period, a time between the 17th and 19th centuries when the city of Edo, a central hub for ukiyo-e print-making, was having a cultural boom. The word ukiyo-e translates to floating-world pictures, meaning pictures depicting the pleasurable, if ephemeral, life in Edo. Subject matter included fashion, famous courtesans, kabuki theater, and genre scenes of everyday life of the time, often set in the backdrop of nature. This print bears remarkable resemblance to Manet’s Boating compositionally, with the blue water filling up the background and a horizon line sitting higher than is visible in the picture plane. 

 

 

 

Éduoard Manet, The Battle of the U.S.S. “Kearsarge” and the C.S.S. “Alabama”, 1864, Oil on canvas, 54 ¼ x 50 ¾ in., Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection. 

In this painting, Manet depicts a battle from the American Civil War between the Union Kearsarge and the Confederate Alabama in which the Alabama was sunk just off the coast of Cherbourg. Manet never saw the event but heard the story through the wide circulation of the press. Critics didn't like his composition, which filled the canvas with mostly water and pushed the primary subject matter nearly to the top edge of the canvas. With its high horizon line and unusual composition, this painting may not have been loved by critics, but we can clearly see the influence of Japanese landscape prints in his work; specifically in Whaling by Hiroshige II. 

 

 

 

Utagawa Hiroshige II, Whaling at Gotō in Hizen Province, from the series One Hundred Famous Views in the Various Provinces, 1859, Ukiyo-e: polychrome woodblock print, 14 x 9 ½ in., Yale University Art Gallery, Accession Number: 1969.31.46. 

 

This print is cited by one scholar as being the kind of art that influenced Manet’s painting, The Battle of the U.S.S. “Kearsarge” and the C.S.S. “Alabama”. As with The Battle, this ukiyo-e print depicts an aquatic event happening with multiple boats on a sea with a high horizon line, where the water takes up a majority of space on the canvas. The compression of space draws attention to the flatness of the canvas as a result.

 

 

  

Édouard Manet, Tama, The Japanese Dog, c. 1875, Oil on canvas, 24 x 19 11/16 in., National Gallery of Art, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Accession Number: 1995.47.12.

 

  This painting was made on the return of Manet’s friend, Duret, and Henri Cernuschi from a visit to Japan in 1870, during which they purchased the dog pictured, named Tama. They also brought back other high-value goods, which may have influenced Manet. Lying at Tama’s feet is a Japanese doll, presumably picked up during the trip. This painting shows how pervasive the Japonisme craze in France was at the time by depicting the very reason for it, goods from Japan, in a common-place genre scene.

Kitagawa Utamoro, Geisha and Attendant on a Rainy Night, ca. 1797, Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, H. 14 ¾ x W. 9 ⅝ in, Object Number: JP1525.

This print of a Geisha and her attendant in the rain also shares much in common with Manet’s subject matter and compositions. The subject matter is beautiful women, one of which is a Geisha in her specialized attire, doing the ordinary activity of walking through a hard rain. It is a close up genre scene depicting “modern” women and fashion, all of which Manet loves to paint. One may think of Manet’s, Jeanne (Spring), 1881, which features a popular Parisian actress as his model in a close up of a young woman holding a parasol in a garden. Both this print and Manet’s painting Jeanne feature close ups of pop-culture figures doing ordinary activities in outdoor spaces, true genre works of their respective times.

 

 

 

Édouard Manet, Émile Zola, 1868, Oil on canvas, 57 x 45 in., Musée d’ Orsay, Paris.

 

In this portrait of art collector and friend, Émile Zola, Manet depicts a man who is known to be a collector of his own paintings, but also clues to his place and time. Manet paints Zola in a shallow space and in a graphic manner, with little modeling in the face and little definition in his black jacket. He is surrounded by the environment of his study, by which you can tell his interest in Japanese art through the presence of the Japanese screen in the upper left corner and the ukiyo-e print in the top right corner, which is posted on a bulletin board alongside a small print of Olympia. Zola’s inkwell is also east Asian. In this portrait, not only do we get a picture of Manet’s friend, but we also see both subject matter and compositional strategies reflecting those of ukiyo-e prints and japonisme.

 

 

 

References:


Hanson, Anne Coffin. “Japanese Art” in Manet and the Modern Tradition. Yale University Press, 1977.

Harris, Beth and Zucker, Steven,"Édouard Manet, Émile Zola," in Smarthistory. November 23, 2015. Accessed April 26, 2026, https://smarthistory.org/edouard-manet-emile-zola/.