2021-22 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Impressions of the Floating World: Japan through the Eyes of Mary Cassatt Michelle Liu
Impressions of the Floating World: Japan through the Eyes of Mary Cassatt
Michelle Liu 2022 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Ms. Donna Gilbert, Mrs. Meredith Cranston April 13, 2022
Liu 2 Introduction In 1879, impressionist artist Mary Cassatt painted Woman Standing With a Fan, one of her only two known works in distemper paint. Using rapid brushwork to handle the quick-drying medium, Cassatt captures a single spontaneous and humble moment of life: A woman reaches back to gather her skirt, holding a painted fan in her right hand. (See Fig.1) The figure is cast in silhouette against a bright source from behind, with Cassatt using foreshortening and cropping to create a vertical composition.1 There is a striking lack of three-dimensionality in Cassatt’s rendering of the painting; instead, the artist focuses on using flat planes of color in the simple primary hues of rosy red, midnight blue, and citrine yellow. She incorporates subtle differences in the harmonious tones, conveying a brilliant sense of light. With a natural flow in the movements of her brush and the lightness of the figure’s pose, this piece is one of the most successful examples of Cassatt’s experimentation with characteristics drawn from ukiyo-e: Japanese woodblock prints.2 Woman Standing With a Fan was painted at the height of japonisme, or the influence of Japanese artworks on European art and culture, in the late nineteenth-century. After the reopening of Western commerce with Japan for the first time since 1638, a wave of fascination swept over Europe and America as Japanese artworks began pouring in through trade routes. With previously rare art objects becoming more accessible to a larger audience, a craze for
1
Amon Carter Museum of American Art. "Amon Carter Museum of American Art Announces Major 50th Anniversary Acquisition by Mary Cassatt." News release. October 21, 2011. https://www.cartermuseum.org/press-release/carter-museum-announces-50th-anniversary-acquisitionmary-cassatt. 2
Jennifer T. Criss, "Japonisme and beyond in the Art of Marie Bracquemond, Mary Cassatt, and Berthe Morisot, 1867–1895." Abstract. PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2007, 3. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global (A&I).
Liu 3 Japanese imports ensued among the French bourgeoisie.3 Decorative bronzes, porcelains, and lacquered goods all became highly prized symbols of status to display in lavishly furnished French homes.4 Japanese ukiyo-e prints in particular experienced a rapid rise in popularity among buyers; the nature of printing lent well to mass production, leading to a high circulation of ukiyoe in Europe.
Figure 1. Cassatt, Mary. Woman Standing With a Fan, 1878-79. Distemper on canvas, 128.6 x 72 cm. Private Collection.
3
4
Criss, 3.
Colta Feller Ives, The Great Wave: the Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints. (New York, N.Y.: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974) 11.
Liu 4 The impressionist artists of the nineteenth-century avant-garde were among the most dedicated new customers of ukiyo-e prints. Tired of the classical artistic tradition touted by the Académie des Beaux Arts and the Salon de Paris, impressionists had begun seeking a new way to approach artwork.5 Discovering ukiyo-e prints provided them with a fresh source of inspiration. Eschewing the stiffness and formality of classical European artworks, Japanese artworks depicted down-to-earth scenes from everyday life with refreshing honesty. Along with other impressionists like close friend Edgar Degas, Cassatt felt drawn to the directness and linear elegance of ukiyo-e. Openly admiring the beauty of Japanese prints, she strove to capture the same stylistic qualities and the humility of daily scenes in her own emulations. 6 However, due to a disconnect with firsthand knowledge of Japan, at the time artists also viewed Japan through a lens shaped largely by European stereotypes. This led to complex misunderstandings as artists continued to seek inspiration from ukiyo-e and fed into the “Japanomania” of the nineteenth-century. Since Japan had been closed off to trade for centuries, lack of knowledge about the country led it to possess a mysterious and “irresistible fascination” in Europe.7 Information disseminated through French newspapers, journals, and exhibitions introduced Japanese objects as “exotic” and “sensual” to audiences.8 While European artists admired the formalist aesthetics of ukiyo-e Japanese woodblock prints, impressionist painter Mary Cassatt’s emulations of ukiyo-e reveal that she perceived Japan through a rigid,
5
Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 51.
6
Polyxeni Potter, "Women Caring for Children in 'The Floating World.'" Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 11 (November 2006): 1808. Gale General OneFile. 7
Lionel Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West. (London: Phaidon, 2011) 13. 8
Criss, "Japonisme and beyond,” 38.
Liu 5 conventional viewpoint shaped by the genteel standards of bourgeois Parisian society and the exoticization of Japan in European culture at the time. The term japonisme was first coined in 1872 by Philippe Burty to refer to the influence of Japanese artwork on French art and design.9 Japonaiseries are Japanese art objects such as fans, decorative screens, ceramics. Viewed as a sign of elevated social and economic status in Europe, japonaiseries were often used as decorations in the homes of the wealthy bourgeoisie.10 Japanese woodblock color prints are known as ukiyo-e, a term first devised by seventeenth-century Japanese writer Asa Ryoi in reference to the ephemeral aspects of life. 11 Ukiyo-e translates to the “Floating World,” with uki meaning “overhead” and yo as “world.”12 First emerging in the seventeenth century, the ukiyo-e tradition depicted scenes of daily life in Edo Japan. It represented the lively and especially the pleasure-seeking aspects of urban living, often depicting courtesans, kabuki (Japanese theater) actors, or landscapes.13 Impressionism was an avant-garde artistic movement that emerged in mid-nineteenth century Paris; abandoning the traditional classical painting style, impressionists focused on capturing light, nature, scenes of everyday life instead. They strove to imbue works with a sense of emotion and spontaneity, using loose, expressive brushstrokes and bright colors.14
9
Criss, 9.
10
Criss, 2.
11
Roderick Conway Morris, "Pleasure in the Floating World." International Herald Tribune, April 17, 2004, 10. Gale General OneFile. 12
Edmond de Goncourt, Michael Locey, and Lenita Locey. Utamaro. (New York: Parkstone International, 2012) 11. 13
Yoko Chiba, "Japonisme: East-West Renaissance in the Late 19th Century." Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 31, no. 2 (1998), 4. 14
Nathalia Brodskaya, Impressionism. (New York: Parkstone International, 2010) 3. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Liu 6 The Context behind Cassatt’s Ukiyo-e Emulations Japanese prints first began entering Europe after Commodore Perry’s 1853 expedition.15 By 1868, influential dealers like Siegfried Bing had begun specializing in introducing the prints to European buyers.16 Japanese art and culture captivated the imaginations of European artists and writers, who became dedicated collectors of japanoiseries. Art historian Ernest Chesneau, recalling early 1860s France, wrote: Old Ivories, enamels, faience and porcelain, bronzes, lacquers, wood sculptures, sewn materials, embroidered satins, playthings, simply arrived at a merchant’s shop and immediately left for artists’ studios or writers’ studios. 17 Among the most passionate admirers of Japanese art were brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, art dealers and collectors who published several writings on their specialty, Japanese works. The brothers remarked that the interest in Japanese art had become so great that it was “spreading to everything and everyone, even to idiots and middle-class women.”18 Ukiyo-e’s fresh, new style served as a stark contrast against classical guidelines and proportions. As the impressionists began collecting prints of their own, they viewed the ukiyo-e style as a method of “liberating [themselves] from conventionally stiff portrayals of human and natural forms.”19 Ukiyo-e’s lack of perspective, flat planes of color, light with no shadows, and
15
Amir Lowell Abou-jaoude, "A Pure Invention: Japan, Impressionism, and the West, 1853-1906." The History Teacher 50, no. 1 (2016), 59. 16
Deborah Johnson, "Cassatt's Color Prints of 1891: The Unique Evolution of a Palette." Notes in the History of Art 9, no. 3 (1990), 33. JSTOR. 17
Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings, 38.
18
Ives, The Great Wave, 12.
19
Abou-jaoude, "A Pure Invention," 60.
Liu 7 rhythmic use of decorative patterns all were key characteristics adopted by the impressionists as antithetical to classical tradition. 20 Writing in his journal on September 30, 1864, Edmond de Goncourt praised Japanese artists for their radical skill: Everything that they do is taken from observation. They represent what they see: the incredible effects of the sky, the stripes on a mushroom, the transparency of the jellyfish. Their art copies nature as does Gothic art. Nothing like this in the Greeks: their art, except for sculpture, is false and invented.21 Japanese artists were fascinated by elements of nature and strove to represent it through careful study of the natural world; as in Utagawa Hiroshige’s print Iris garden, Horikiri (Horikiri no hanashobu) (See Fig. 2), ukiyo-e artists often rendered nature scenes with exacting detail. The impressionists’ introduction to ukiyo-e presented a fresh view of life that answered their desires to break away from the stilted artistic style of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Easy access to ukiyo-e prints through widespread exhibitions and dealers specializing in Japanese artwork helped fuel an increase in artistic interest across Europe, providing an alternate to traditional classical artwork. Impressionists began studying the art style intently, with Cassatt among the forefront of drawing heavy inspiration from Japanese woodblocks. Cassatt’s initial encounter with ukiyo-e occurred at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts exhibition of 1890, which featured a vast display of 763 woodblock prints imported from Japan. (See Fig. 2) The new art style fascinated Cassatt, leading her to acquire many of the exhibited works from art dealer Siegfried Bing. 22 Cassatt despised conventional artwork and thus felt drawn to
20
Chiba, "Japonisme: East-West Renaissance," 6.
21
Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings, 34.
22
Johnson, "Cassatt's Color Prints of 1891," 34.
Liu 8
Figure 2. Utagawa Hiroshige. Iris garden, Horikiri (Horikiri no hanashobu), 1857. Color woodblock print. ukiyo-e’s honest depictions of everyday life. Inspired, she then began attempting her own emulations, turning to the medium of printmaking and developing her own techniques as she continued practicing.23 Ukiyo-e’s Mother and Child Themes The strongest reason for Cassatt’s meticulous emulations of ukiyo-e lay in its themes of the relationship between mothers and their children. Cassatt immediately felt drawn specifically to Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro’s ukiyo-e prints, endeared by Utamaro’s intimate, sympathetic treatment of mother-child love in his art. Unlike most nineteenth-century European depictions, Utamaro did not attempt to stiffen or formalize the mother-child relationship. He
23
Potter, "Women Caring for Children in 'The Floating World."
Liu 9 depicted honest poses of mothers in everyday scenes such as bathing their children or playing shamisen, a three-stringed traditional Japanese instrument, as in Mother and Child (See Fig. 3).24 Just like Utamaro, Cassatt also sought to treat her subjects with more intimacy and began to use many of his prints as inspiration for her own work.
Figure 4. Utamaro, Kitagawa. Mother and Child, ca. 1801. Woodblock print, 15 x 10 3/16 in. In the works that she created during the following years; Cassatt’s clear-headed depictions of everyday maternal scenes became unique to her at the time. After viewing other artists’ contemporary portraits of children, the critic Joris-Karl Huysmans complained that “the bunch of English and French daubers have put them in such stupid and pretentious poses!" 25 However, in reviewing the impressionist exhibition of 1881, Huysmans instead found himself delighted by Cassatt’s unique portraits:
24
Ives, The Great Wave, 46.
25
Ives, 49.
Liu 10 The gallery in which her canvases hang contains a mother reading, surrounded by tykes, and another mother kissing her baby on the cheeks—they are irreproachable, softly lustrous pearls; they are family life painted with distinction, with love . . . Only a woman can pose a child, dress it, put in pins without sticking herself. 26 Cassatt succeeded in imbuing her work with a sense of humanity and charm, eschewing the formal stiffness of traditional academic portraits. Among the impressionists, Cassatt became the most adept at rendering scenes of children and their mothers. Unlike male contemporaries such as Gustave Caillebotte (See Fig. 4), Cassatt mastered the ability to depict her young subjects with natural posing and lively vigor (See Fig. 5). The themes of intimate portraits in the domestic sphere became Cassatt’s specialty, which drew her further to ukiyo-e artists’ portrayals of everyday scenes.27
Figure 4. Caillebotte, Gustave. Child on a sofa, 1885. Oil on Canvas. Meisterdrucke.
26
Figure 5. Cassatt, Mary. Elsie sitting on a blue chair, 1880. Pastel on paper.
Debra N. Mancoff, Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives (New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998), 83. 27
Ives, The Great Wave, 49.
Liu 11 However, beyond his down-to-earth viewpoint, ultimately Utamaro’s ukiyo-e depictions felt so honest due to his focus on raw, sensuous love. French art dealer Edmond de Goncourt referred to Utamaro as “the painter of Japanese love,” stating that “one must not forget that love for the Japanese is above all erotic.” 28 In October 1863, de Goncourt wrote that: The other day I bought some albums of Japanese obscenities. They delight me, amuse me, and charm my eyes. I look on them as being beyond obscenity, which is there, yet seems not to be there, and which I do not see, so completely does it disappear into fantasy. The violence of the lines, the unexpectedness of the conjunctions, the arrangement of the accessories, the caprice in the poses and the objects, the picturesqueness.29 Cassatt clearly did not see this aspect of ukiyo-e as fit for emulation, choosing to exclude it from the realm of inspiration she drew from Japanese art. Instead, Cassatt focused on depicting the non-sexual love that exists between a mother and her child, rendering it in its most pure and honest form within her works.30 Formalist Aesthetics: Cassatt’s Meticulous Emulations of the Ukiyo-e Style After her initial introduction to ukiyo-e, Cassatt produced a series of 10 aquatint prints for her first solo exhibition at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891.31 Cassatt felt so fascinated that she
28
Edmond de Goncourt, Michael Locey, and Lenita Locey. Utamaro. (New York: Parkstone International, 2012) ix. 29
Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings, 34.
30
Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) 51. 31
Kelsey Martin and Nicole Myers. "Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism." Dallas Museum of Art. 2018. https://collections.dma.org/essay/ogGq1G4j.
Liu 12 visited the large ukiyo-e exhibition at the École des Beaux-Arts at least twice—once with Edgar Degas and once again with Berthe Morisot. 32 Cassatt shared her fascination in a letter to Morisot, one of the only other women in the impressionist group, and wrote to urge her to join her in visiting the exhibition: “Seriously, you must not miss it. You who want to make color prints, you couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful. I dream of doing it myself and can’t think of anything else but color on copper . . . P.S. You must see the Japanese—come as soon as you can.”33 These visits to the École des Beaux-Arts ukiyo-e exhibition represented pivotal moments in Cassatt’s artistic journey, revealing the true depth of her artistic fascination and her commitment to drawing inspiration from the Japanese art style. Through art dealer Siegfried Bing, Cassatt acquired works by Utamaro from the 1890 exhibition to add to her own collection, many of which served as direct inspiration for her later aquatints. For instance, the poses in Utamaro’s prints Bain d-enfant (no. 37) and Femme à sa toilette, examinant sa coiffure au moyen d-un double miroir (no. 375), among those Cassatt purchased from the 1890 exhibition, also appear in Cassatt’s 1891 10-print aquatint series.34 As Cassatt began working with fellow artist Edgar Degas to master her technique and create her own prints, perhaps what drew her most to printmaking was the exciting challenge it presented. Drypoint required the artist to be exacting and precise in every line, allowing far less room for error than painting. As woodblock master Katsushika Hokusai demonstrated in his print Egrets from Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing (See Fig. 6), ukiyo-e artists could render entire forms with a few carefully placed lines, creating a display of pure skill.
32
Ives, The Great Wave, 45.
33
Mathews, Mary Cassatt, 194.
34
Johnson, “Cassatt’s Color Prints,” 31.
Liu 13
Figure 6. Hokusai, Katsushika. Egrets from Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, 1823. In her admiration of the printmaking medium, Cassatt explained: “That is what teaches one to draw. In drypoint you are down to the bare bones; you can’t cheat.”35 Cassatt was eager to hone her skills and launched herself into the disciplined process of creating prints, devoting more than a year to develop a series of 10 aquatints for her first solo exhibition. Cassatt’s first attempt at ukiyo-e emulation was The Bath (See Fig. 7). She chose the subject matter of a mother bathing her child, a scene that also appeared many times in Utamaro’s work (See Fig. 8). At initial glance, it is clear that Cassatt imbued The Bath with many exacting stylistic similarities drawn from the ukiyo-e artistic style. To create her composition, Cassatt adopted Utamaro’s down-to-earth viewpoint, intertwining of material and child forms, and flatly
35
Mancoff, Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives, 15.
Liu 14
Figure 7. Cassatt, Mary. The Bath. 1891. Softground etching with aquatint and drypoint on paper, 12 3/8 x 9 5/8 in. National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.
Figure 8. Utamaro, Kitagawa. Bathtime (Gyōzui), ca. 1801. Woodblock print, 14 11/16 x 9 7/8 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
colored masses against the counterpoint of embroidered patterns.36 Cassatt also borrowed the print format generally used by Utamaro: the upright ōban, measuring about fifteen inches tall by ten inches wide. Thus, her aquatints were larger than most contemporary French prints. 37 Cassatt’s use of colors also bears striking similarities to the Utamaro prints that she studied from. Due to their time spent hanging in her glass veranda, it is very likely that Cassatt’s
36
Ives, The Great Wave, 49.
37
Ives, 46.
Liu 15 collection of reference prints was actually faded and overexposed to light. Her subtle, warm, and pastel palette bears no apparent resemblance to that of a fresh Utamaro print of the 1790s; thus, Cassatt’s choice to forgo the use of vivid colors reveals the depth of her precision in her copies.38 However, the faded colors in many of her prints still clearly display ukiyo-e’s tripartite color scheme.39 Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro admired Cassatt’s scope of technical achievement in aquatint color printing, writing in praise to his son Lucien that: “the tone, even, subtle, delicate . . . the result is admirable, as beautiful as Japanese work, and it’s done with printer's ink!”40
Figure 9. Cassatt, Mary. Gathering Fruit, 1894. Drypoint, softground etching, and aquatint, printed in color, 14 1/2 x 20 in. 38
Johnson, “Cassatt’s Color Prints,” 34.
39
Johnson, 35.
40
Lambourne, Japonisme: Cultural Crossings, 38.
Liu 16 Cassatt’s emulations of Japanese artwork also revealed a display of sheer technical skill. She was “unprecedented” in her application of using the positive space of white paper as a shape, just like ukiyo-e artists.41 Forgoing the use of shadows, Cassatt also modeled body contours masterfully with line alone. The body of the child in Cassatt’s print Gathering Fruit is comprised of only a sparing number of carefully drawn curves, creating a striking form without the use of any classical artistic shading techniques. (See Fig. 9) "I do not admit that a woman can draw like that," remarked Degas when he saw Cassatt's prints. 42 Cassatt’s Genteel Viewpoint In spite of her specific stylistic emulations, Cassatt ultimately created works that were far more toned-down than ukiyo-e in terms of sensuality. In comparing Cassatt’s version of a dressing scene in her work The Fitting (See Fig. 10) against Utamaro’s A Woman Dressing a Girl for a Kabuki Dance (See Fig. 11), we see that Cassatt chooses to highlight the materiality, instead of the sensual romantic aspects, of everyday leisure. She emphasizes the detailed and rich patterns of dresses, wallpaper, and carpet.43 While Utamaro places his figures in open space, Cassatt embeds her subjects squarely into a clear environment. 44 Differences in artistic line quality also reveal Cassatt’s more reserved style. Ukiyo-e lines experiment freely with the natural variation of thickness or fineness in bold brushstrokes, often using only one continuous line with all its fluid imperfections to render a smooth curve.45 On the
41
Johnson, “Cassatt’s Color Prints,” 36.
42
Ives, The Great Wave, 53.
43
Yoshihara, Embracing the East, 52.
44
Ives, The Great Wave, 51.
45
Goncourt, Utamaro, 15.
Liu 17 other hand, Cassatt’s lines are more deliberate and fragile, and she uses multiple fragmented strokes to create a curve. The curves in the folds of her subject’s clothing are less boldly rounded than those of Utamaro’s.46
Figure 10. Utamaro, Kitagawa. A Woman Figure 11. Cassatt, Mary. The Fitting, 1890Dressing a Girl for a Kabuki Dance “Musume 91. Drypoint and aquatint, 16 13/16 x 11 3/4 Dojōji,” with “Brother Picture” (E-kyōdai) of in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. a Monkey Trainer, ca. 1795-96. Woodblock print in the e-kyodai format. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The same holds true for Cassatt’s print The Letter (See Fig.12), possibly inspired by Utamaro’s print Hinazuru of the Keizetsuro (See Fig. 13). Cassatt had continued borrowing themes from ukiyo-e beyond mother-child relationships, unwittingly adopting the allusion of the Japanese oiran (prostitute) with a towel to her mouth in this work. The Letter retained the same modest downward glance as Utamaro’s depiction of the courtesan, with both women averting
46
Ives, The Great Wave, 53.
Liu 18 their eyes away from the viewer of the work.47 However, Cassatt toned down the sensuality significantly in her depictions; once again, she still places all of her subjects firmly in a solid environment and depicts wallpaper as visible in the background, forgoing Utamaro’s use of free, blank space.48
Figure 13. Cassatt, Mary. The Letter, 1890-91. Figure 14. Utamaro, Kitagawa. Hinazuru of Drypoint and aquatint. Metropolitan Museum the Keizetsuro, ca. 1789-1800. Color of Art, New York. woodblock print. Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
The Influence of Cassatt’s Upbringing on Her Viewpoint Cassatt’s devout adherence to social standards was also shaped by her upbringing and past experiences. Cassatt came from a well-bred, wealthy American family, enjoying a high social status and refined upbringing. Her family had moved often during her childhood, taking
47
Johnson, “Cassatt’s Color Prints,” 31.
48
Ives, The Great Wave, 51.
Liu 19 their wealth and social position to cosmopolitan circles through the United States and Europe.49 In 1850, the Cassatt family left their home in Philadelphia to embark on an extended tour of Europe spanning six years, allowing Cassatt her first taste of European life. Similar to many Americans, Cassatt’s parents held firsthand knowledge of European culture in high regard and considered it a distinct advantage in the education of their children. Their tour included prolonged stays in the cities of Darmstadt, Heidelberg, and Paris, where the Cassatt children were enrolled in school and the young Mary quickly picked up German and French. Cassatt must have experienced the magnificent Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855, with the family returning back to Philadelphia later that year. Five years later, at the age of sixteen, Cassatt enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and began her formal artistic education as a full-time student. The academy familiarized Cassatt with the classical European style, teaching her from its robust collection and annual exhibition of Old Master works and contemporary European paintings. Cassatt underwent two years of preliminary training, where students created copies of antique casts from the academy’s collection before they were allowed to learn painting or sculpture. 50 In the face of contemporary changes in artistic styles, the Academy where Cassatt studied maintained a reputation as a staunchly traditional art school.51 Cassatt met and learned from many peers at the Academy, especially fellow female artists from the same social class. (See Fig. 14) She would keep in contact with her Academy classmates for many years; Cassatt’s best friend at the
49
Mathews. Mary Cassatt, 11.
50
Mancoff, Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives, 8.
51
Stephan Salisbury, "Old School Ties: There's Nothing Abstract about the Teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.," Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, P.A.), 1997. Proquest.
Liu 20 Academy, Eliza Haldeman, also moved to Europe to pursue an artistic career, traveling around Europe with Cassatt for a period to explore genre painting (paintings featuring everyday peasant life). 52
Figure 14. Cassatt (right) creates a casting of a hand with other students at the Academy. Photograph of Eliza Haldeman, Inez Lewis, Edmund Smith, Rebecca M. Welsh (?), and Mary Cassatt taken in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1862. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Archives. Cassatt’s writings from her time spent painting in Spain also indicate her genteel attitude. After studying briefly in Parma, Italy for eight months in 1872, Cassatt took trips to Madrid and
52
Mathews, Mary Cassatt, 43.
Liu 21 Seville as she continued traveling around Europe to refine her artistic skill, painting portraits of the local residents she encountered (See Fig. 15).53 As she continued her stay in Spain, Cassatt viewed Spaniards as “odd” and “peculiar” for their skin color. In a letter to her sister in 1873, Cassatt wrote that “The great thing here is the odd types and peculiar rich dark coloring of the models, if it were not for that I should not stay.” 54 Cassatt also found her life in Spain jarring to what she had experienced in the more genteel environment of her upbringing: “In her characteristic high-handed way, she judged ‘the Spaniards infinitely inferior in education and breeding to the Italians’ and that they were ‘barbarians’ when it came to fashion.” 55
Figure 15. Cassatt, Mary. Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla, 1873. Oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. 53
Adelyn Dohme Breeskin, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Graphic Work, 2nd ed. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Pr., 1979), 29. 54
Mathews, Mary Cassatt, 84.
55
Mathews, 84.
Liu 22 In 1874, Cassatt stopped wandering Europe in search of artistic inspiration and instead returned to Paris with the intention of settling in the city permanently to live a fashionable life with her sister, Lydia. Cassatt then purposefully turned toward more socially acceptable subject matter in creating her works, revealing her adherence to genteel European social standards. Although she had spent a few years in the countryside painting themes of melancholy women, “she had been so shaken by the lack of public appreciation of her work, as measured by sales, that she cast about for a surer foothold . . . Consequently, she abandoned her old interest in costume genre pictures, such as the peasant paintings, Carnival subjects, and bullfighters, and set about becoming a society portraitist and painter of fashionable life.” 56 Gender Influence on Cassatt’s Conventionalism Cassatt’s position as a woman among the impressionist also played a critical role in her more orthodox depictions of subject matter, eschewing the raw and scandalous sensuality that her male counterparts incorporated into their work. As Japanese culture became popular in nineteenth century Europe, it was introduced differently to men and women. Texts written by men, intended for men, emphasize “feminized delicacy of Japanese art and of the exotic beauty and sexual availability of their women.” 57 For instance, geisha, or Japanese hostesses trained to entertain men with conversation, dance, and song, were portrayed as exotic and deferential females.58 However, for French female audiences, texts about Japan do not emphasize sensuality or eroticism. Instead, journals focus on the role of women in Japanese society, highlighting
56
Mathews, 95.
57
Criss, "Japonisme and beyond,"39.
58
Criss, 39.
Liu 23 differences that would have appealed as fascinating to French readers. In Le Journal des demoiselles (The Ladies’ Diary) author Ernest Chesnau, one of the leading collectors and connoisseurs of Japanese artwork along with Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, observes how marriage in Japan was “a true bond, a bond of affection and also business” that related to “the deepest respect, by foresight, by the cares, by the delicacies of attention for which many of our European women could rightly be jealous.”59 French women would have actually perceived that women’s rights in Japan surpassed their own, ingraining the strict and oppressive gender standards of France in their minds. Unlike her male contemporaries, Cassatt also was confined solely to the domestic sphere in choosing the subject matter for her paintings. While Manet often painted scenes of modern life featuring locations such as the beer bar in The Beer Waitress (See Fig. 16), Cassatt painted within private, elegant locations considered acceptable for women, rendering a fashionable lady sitting in a tea room in Lady at the Tea Table (See Fig. 17). Although Cassatt still strove to break the mold of formal classical academic painting in seeking commonplace scenes, her gender obliged her to turn to elegant parlors rather than unrefined, plebeian settings.60 Cassatt’s gender restrictions created a paradox in her process of choosing subject matter: “Cassatt gave expression to the modern woman’s desire for autonomy and access to the public sphere, a desire based on
59
Ernest Chesneau, Le Journal des demoiselles 11 (November 1868), 322. Original text written in French, translated in this paper “Apprenez, d’autre part, que ces rigueurs assez rares en somme, qui forcent la femme a s’inquieter avec sollicitude des actes de son mari, et qui font par cela meme un lien véritable, un lien d’affection et aussi d ’affaires de l’union conjugale; apprenez, dis-je, que ces rigueurs sont compensées, dans l’ordinaire de la vie, par l’hommage constant du respect le plus profond, par des prevenances, des soins, des delicatesses d’attention, dont beaucoup de nos femmes europeennes pourraient a juste titre se montrer jalouses.” 60
Barbara H. Weinberg and Carrie Rebora Barratt. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 17651915. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.
Liu 24 modern doctrines of rationality, progress, and ambitious individualism.” 61 However, at the same time, “her words betray signs of a conventional, almost essentialist belief in ‘women’s qualities,’ a femininity of sweetness and charm, an acceptance of the gender stereotypes that the mural seems to defy.”62
Figure 16. Cassatt, Mary. Lady at the Tea Table, 1883-85. Oil on canvas, 29 x 24 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Figure 17. Manet, Édouard. The Beer Waitress, 1879. Oil on canvas, 77 x 65 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Thus, Cassatt focused mainly on domestic themes, with scenes of children and mothers located securely in the home, instead of adopting Utamaro’s themes of pleasure-seeking with yūkaku (red-light-districts with brothels) scenes. 63
61
Norma Broude. "Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman or the Cult of True Womanhood?" Woman's Art Journal 21, no. 2 (2000): 36-43. https://doi.org/10.2307/1358749, 36. 62
Broude, 36.
63
Goncourt, Utamaro, ix.
Liu 25 In placing her subjects within the domestic sphere reserved for women, Cassatt chose to create an enclosed sense of privacy within many of her works. Instead of adopting the voyeuresque gaze of many of her male contemporaries as well as Utamaro’s more erotic ukiyo-e prints, she defines the realms within her paintings as strictly private, personal to the mother and her child only. In Maternal Caress (See Fig. 18), Cassatt employs many techniques drawn from ukiyo-e compositional styles, drawing the figure forward to touch the edge of the print. She flattens the perspective and, again, makes use of decorative patterns to place the subjects within a defined, wallpapered background, confining them within the domestic sphere of the home and creating an atmosphere of privacy.64
Figure 18. Cassatt, Mary. Maternal Caress, 1890-91. Drypoint, aquatint and softground etching, 14 3/8 × 10 9/16 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In comparing Cassatt’s work with male contemporary and fellow Impressionist Edgar Degas, two starkly different artistic approaches are again revealed. Although both artists depict a 64
Debra N. Mancoff, Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives, 88-89.
Liu 26 bathing scene, a common theme in ukiyo-e, Cassatt keeps her subject matter at eye level in The Child’s Bath (See Fig. 20) while Degas paints as if looking down at the woman that is his subject matter in The Tub (See Fig. 21). Both artists use stylistic elements like asymmetrical composition to emulate ukiyo-e in different ways, maximizing their two different intended effects. Ultimately, “whereas the Frenchman’s scenes seem observed from a voyeur’s keyhole perspective, The Child’s Bath and other Cassatt pictures are infused with a wholesome domesticity, as though seen from the vantage point of a family member.”65 Unlike Degas, Cassatt refuses to adopt the sensuality of ukiyo-e themes such as bathing, instead choosing a more chaste manner of depiction.
Figure 19. Cassatt, Mary. The Child's Bath, 1893–1893. Oil paint, 3′ 3″ x 2′ 2.″ Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.
65
Figure 20. Degas, Edgar. The Tub. 1886. Pastel. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
"Mary Cassatt, Genteel Powerhouse." World and I, March 1999, 96. Gale in Context: Biography.
Liu 27 Another comparison can be drawn with Cassatt’s against fellow impressionist Claude Monet’s work. In La Japonaise (See Fig. 21), Monet paints his wife wearing a Japanese kimono and holding a Japanese fan, with several more painted paper fans in the background. However, at the time, it would only have been acceptable for male artists, and not female artists, to exaggerate sensuality as Monet did in Japonisme: “Monet manipulated the perceived sexuality of Japanese geisha to his advantage and appropriated it to a distinctly European vision of male desire, something that would never be seen in the works of Morisot, Cassatt, or Bracquemond.” 66 Unlike her male contemporaries, Cassatt upholds a feminist stance in her works. Although far more reserved and uptight in execution than those of male artists, Cassatt’s paintings show no semblance of the male gaze; Cassatt in no way attempts to sexualize her female subjects, portraying them in a clear-headed light.
Figure 21. Monet, Claude. La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume), 1876. Oil on canvas, 91 1/4 x 56 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 66
Criss, "Japonisme and beyond,"147.
Liu 28 The European Exoticization of Japan Cassatt’s perception of Japan ultimately was also shaped by the common exoticization, or othering, of the country in European media at the time. The 1867 World’s Fair (Exposition Universelle de 1867) played a major role in the initial introduction of Japanese culture to Europe, with a model of a Japanese farmhouse and three Japanese women present in Paris as part of the show. Exhibitions such as the 1867 World’s Fair left a monumental impact: nearly seven million people visited the six-month-long exhibition, of which the Japanese pavilion was one of the noted highlights.67
Figure 22. Anonymous, 1867. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Images of Japan (See Fig. 22) became commonly published in newspapers and journal articles to be disseminated to the European public. The text accompanying this image, written by Paul
67
Criss, 38.
Liu 29 Bellet, in the journal publication L’exposition universelle de 1867 illustrée [International Exposition of 1867 Illustrated] reads: Here is the farm with its straw roof which rises to a point on the edges and which carries at its summit the protective divinities of the hearth, very pretty monsters! Here is the women’s apartment; this is where three Japanese beauties stand . . . They do not seem to suspect the presence of the public who crowd around them to see and admire them. They go, come, get up, sit on their mats, cross-legged exactly as if they were alone in their house of Yeddo [Tokyo] . . . The complexion of these young women is exactly that of Andalusian brunettes, but they make the mistake of bleaching it with rice powder with a profusion that proves that rice is a Japanese product! 68 Bellet’s description of Japanese women as “pretty monsters” reflected the common intonation in Europe of the Japanese as “other” than themselves, contributing to readers of the journal viewing the Japanese as a group designated to be “other” than civilized citizens. Stereotypes propagated through media representations led to a resulting association of Japan with passivity and sensuality in Europe. The three Japanese women’s presence in the 1867 World’s Fair appealed to the long-standing French belief in Japan as a nation characterized as demure, feminine, and sensual. Their passive inclusion must have also appealed to how the French exhibition goers imagined the Japanese to be, corroborating the widespread images of Japanese courtesans that circulated around France in the wildly popular ukiyo-e woodblock prints and in other media.69
68
Paul Bellet. "Les Costumes populaires du Japon" [Popular Costumes of Japan]. L 'Exposition Universelle de 1867 illustrée, 1867, 364. 69
Criss, "Japonisme and beyond," 38.
Liu 30 Other widespread journal articles about Japan also created a specific image of Japan in readers’ minds. In an 1869 article for the journal Femme et la famille (Wife and family), despite her generally positive tone, author Julie Gouraud does not fully admire Japan. Describing Japanese parents as “cruel pagans,” she writes: The distinctive character of New Year’s Day in Yedo is to take care of the pleasures of childhood. If only the light of the Evangelicals would arrive in the heart of these cruel pagans, and so they would understand that fathers and mothers have plenty of other duties to fulfill than to give gifts to their children. 70 With this critique of Japan, Gouraud emphasizes the differences between Japanese society and that of the French. As was common in late nineteenth-century opinion writing, Gouraud reinforces Western cultural and religious superiority to her reader audience of French women. 71 Among the most influential publications in spreading knowledge of Japan and sustaining interest in Japanese artwork within the European and American public was the journal Le Japon Artistique, or Artistic Japan (See Fig. 23). Published in a run of monthly installments and printed in three languages (French, German, and English), the magazine contributed to the Japonisme movement on an international level. Helmed by leading art critic and connoisseur Siegfried Bing, Artistic Japan was a product of interest from artistic circles including writer and collector Edmond de Goncourt and art dealer Philippe Burty, who started the original attempt at a Japanese art and culture magazine before Bing took over. The magazine appealed to an audience
70
Julie Gouraud, “Causerie,” La Femme et la famille 2 (December 1869), 37.
71
Criss, "Japonisme and beyond," 57.
Liu 31 of not only experienced collectors but also members of the wealthy middle class, who were seeking to discover more about how best to furnish their homes with Japanese objects. 72
Figure 23. Le Japon Artistique, vol.3, no.17, 1888-1891. Cover. University of Edinburgh. As the craze for Japanese art and culture grew over the course of the mid to late nineteenth century, Japonisme became considered fashionably exotic in bourgeois French society. A high demand for decorative fans, screens, and all other japonaiserie objects emerged, with these artisan items described in the Petit Journal de la Mode [Little Fashion Journal] as “the character of a very presentable exoticism” that had enraptured French society.73 Artists were
72
Gabriel P. Weisberg, Muriel Rakusin, and Stanley Rakusin, "On Understanding Artistic Japan," The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts 1 (1986): 6. 73
Criss, 82.
Liu 32 especially dedicated collectors of Japanese art objects and often painted them into the compositions of their paintings. French painter James Tissot’s studio collection included a Japanese black lacquered household altar, embroidered silk kimonos, Japanese dolls, and folding screens along with many others; Tissot assembled these items into paintings featuring young women admiring the Japanese objects. 74 (See Fig. 24) Cassatt herself decorated her apartment
Figure 24. Tissot, James. Young Ladies Looking at Japanese Objects, 1869. Oil on canvas. Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati. 74
Lawrence Helman, "Resplendent James Tissot Works at Legion of Honor," San Francisco Examiner (San Francisco, C.A.), 2019, 14, https://puffin.harker.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/resplendent-james-tissotworks-at-legion-honor/docview/2309273495/se-2?accountid=618.
Liu 33 in Paris with these fashionable objects. When Cassatt and her sister Lydia entertained guests, they served chocolat, or Parisian hot chocolate, in the finest china sets and their guests sat among the statues and “exotic” curiosities of their home.75 Her decorative furnishings also inevitably became the subject matter in many of her drawings and paintings. Cassatt created multiple artworks featuring women holding uchiwa paper fans imported from Japan, which must have been part of her everyday collection of art objects in her home.
Figure 25. Cassatt, Mary. Tea, ca. 1890. Drypoint, 12 × 9 3/8 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. In Tea (See Fig. 25), Cassatt creates an intimate, quiet atmosphere of elegance and wealth using carefully placed Japanese objects. Atop the table sits a cup and saucer decorated with cream and deep blue motifs from Cassatt’s prized tea set, which she believed to be Japanese porcelain, and a paper uchiwa fan dangles from the hand of the sitter. Her inclusion of the gilded
75
Mathews, Mary Cassatt, 97.
Liu 34 tea set and the uchiwa fan reinforce the fashionable bourgeois setting, achieving her intention of emphasizing the elite social class of her sitter. Similarly, the young woman in Girl in Pink with a Fan (See Fig. 26) holds a painted uchiwa fan in one hand. Cassatt’s depictions of Japanese art objects in her works reference her identity as a fashionable upper-middle class woman who collected highly sought-after objects from a popular, elite Japan that influenced both French art and society in the late-nineteenth century.76
Figure 26. Cassatt, Mary. Girl in Pink with a Fan, 1889. Pastel on paper, 59.8 x 49.5 cm. Tokyo Fuji Art Museum.
76
Criss, 163.
Liu 35 Conclusion Mary Cassatt was among the most passionate admirers of Japanese artwork as well as the most successful in creating her own emulations of ukiyo-e. Cassatt pushed Japonisme to new limits, studying carefully from ukiyo-e masters and working fervently at perfecting her own printmaking techniques. However, ultimately the elements that Cassatt drew from Japanese artwork were toned down, molded by Cassatt to fit the upper-middle class experience of living in bourgeois Paris. While Cassatt admired Japanese art objects for their innovative techniques and artistic style, she still adopted the widespread European mindset of Japan as “other” or as exotic. Through a combination of media circulation and exhibitions, the rise of Japonisme created a wave of cultural influence in France, Europe, and America, with audiences adopting their perceptions of Japan based on the artwork and media they were consuming. Cassatt played a pivotal role in creating some of the most influential works of the Japonist movement, most notably her series of ten drypoint aquatints featuring the ukiyo-e theme of mother-child relationships and women’s interior lives. Japonisme’s nineteenth century influence still can be felt in the modern day, with remnants of overly stereotyped attitudes still remaining in Western perceptions of Japanese artwork and visual culture. Cassatt’s response to Japanese artwork left a lasting impression on the realm of Japonisme both artistically and culturally, providing valuable insight into how she perceived Japan as an American woman living in the bourgeois circles of French society in the late-nineteenth century.
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Liu 37
Lambourne, Lionel. Japonisme: Cultural Crossings between Japan and the West. London: Phaidon, 2011. Mancoff, Debra N. Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998. Martin, Kelsey, and Nicole Myers. "Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism." Dallas Museum of Art. 2018. https://collections.dma.org/essay/ogGq1G4j. "Mary Cassatt, Genteel Powerhouse." World and I, March 1999, 96. https://link-galecom.puffin.harker.org/apps/doc/A54662818/BIC?u=harker&sid=summon&xid=4e98d4e 8. Mathews, Nancy Mowll. Mary Cassatt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Morris, Roderick Conway. "Pleasure in the Floating World." International Herald Tribune, April 17, 2004, 10. https://link-galecom.puffin.harker.org/apps/doc/A115471915/GIC?u=harker&sid=summon&xid=049e1d 3b. Napier, Susan Jolliffe. From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West. New York, N.Y.: Basingstoke, 2008. Potter, Polyxeni. "Women Caring for Children in 'The Floating World.'" Emerging Infectious Diseases 12, no. 11 (November 2006): 1808. https://link-galecom.puffin.harker.org/apps/doc/A154561290/ITOF?u=harker&sid=summon&xid=8ce7d 076. Salisbury, Stephan. "Old School Ties: There's Nothing Abstract about the Teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts." Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, P.A.), 1997. https://puffin.harker.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/newspapers/oldschool-ties/docview/1842127302/se-2?accountid=618. von Seidlitz, Woldemar, and Dora Amsden. Impressions of Ukiyo-E. New York, NY: Parkstone International, 2016. Weinberg, H. Barbara, and Carrie Rebora Barratt. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.
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