ルノワールのジャポニスム
Renoir’s Japonisme
In the Frosting and Filling of his Art
From ‘Cheap’ Props to ‘Kogei’ Aesthetics and an Implicit Philosophy of ‘Wa’
Yasutaka Aoyama
The Japonisme Museum
“Old Corot opened our eyes to the beauty of the Loing, which is a river like any other;
and I am sure that the Japanese landscape is no more beautiful than other landscapes.
But the point is that Japanese painters knew how to bring out their hidden treasure."
Auguste Renoir speaking to his son, in Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir (1962:222)
Auguste Renoir, ‘Still Life with Bouquet’, 1871, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
The above painting was the front piece of an exhibit on japonisme in 1975 in the United States, which an article in The New York Times, ‘On Art: Japonisme Stirring Cleveland’, described thus:
“At the very beginning of “Japonisme,” the exhibition that has drawn large and conspicuously attentive crowds to the Cleveland Museum of Art, there is a painting by Renoir that brings most visitors to a halt. It is dated 1871 and is quite unlike most people's idea of Renoir. The amiable hedonist of the female nudes is not in evidence. In his place is a man who is making an inventory of the objects he likes best. The painting is not so much built up as added to, and makes it clear that, at that moment in Renoir's career there were two sides to his creative personality a European side and Japanese side.”
---A “Japanese side” to Renoir’s creativity---this was an assertion perhaps more easily made then than now. For those were the days of a "Japonisme Renaissance"---a resurgence of interest in things Japanese from origami to judo, particularly in the United States. This was due in no small part to the post-WWII US occupation of Japan, and thus close encounter with Japanese culture, a revival that would continue well into the 1970s. Such ideas were not met with the resistance they would encounter in the 21st century, an age presumably more enlightened.
The New York Times article finds symbols of an East-West interaction within the painting, its layout also revealing of a Japanese compositional approach:
“A dark print in a dark frame stands for Europe, in this context, together with two dusky old books in leather bindings and a large bouquet of flowers wrapped in white paper. In contrast to all this, Renoir included a Japanese fan and a Japanese pot---objects that, by their fresh, bright and stylized color, make quite a different impression. Renoir set all this on canvas not in a formal European way, but rather as Hokusai laid out his images in the “Manga,” a 15 volume sourcebook of images in woodcut, which had been current in Paris since the eighteen-fifties.” (John Russell for The New York Times, Aug. 23, 1975:19)
Gabriel P. Weisberg, a leading American scholar of japonisme, teaching for many years at the University of Minnesota, writes in his milestone Japonisme: Japanese influence on French Art, 1853-1910 (Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975):
“The Renoir painting Still Life with Bouquet, 1871, shows how the color of a Japanese fan can set the tone for a whole painting. It also illustrates the importance of fans and prints in studios and homes of French artists, for Monet was not the only painter to come under this influence.” (1975: 118)
Renoir was no exception, and Japanese motifs are found in his works throughout his long career. And as we shall see, their role was not simply one of added exotic interest.
His kimono clad ‘Madame Hériot’ (1882, Hamburg Art Museum, called elsewhere ‘Henriot’), below, was the kind of piece every Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter did, almost as if a ritual tribute to the new age of art. Likewise for the subject, to have a portrait done in kimono was a mark of sophistication for any woman who considered herself an aesthete, becoming a tradition for the wealthy well into the 20th century.
But what is of interest to us is not just the appearance of Japanese symbolism in Renoir’s paintings. Such symbols also hint at a source for a fundamental characteristic of Renoir’s artistry---his sensibility towards color, tone and texture. It is this aspect of his work that shares an aesthetic with Japanese artisanal crafts called ‘kogei’, such as textiles, porcelains, and fans.
To elaborate, consider that on one hand, that his paintings possess a quality not unlike the rich colors of a kimono; brightly contrasting color with a silky or fine porcelain, ‘Kakiemon-like’ delicacy and sheen. Simultaneously, on the other hand, there is a more subdued and pastel-like aspect, a fading and spreading of color---not so unlike a typical Japanese sensu or uchiwa design often done in ‘tomei sui-sai’ (diluted watercolor, allowing light to pass through it), and exceedingly popular in Europe at the time. The sensu fan below left, in ‘Girl with Fan’ (1880-81, Hermitage), though unidentified as Japanese, captures that tomei sui-sai quality well, and whether manufactured in Japan or not, possesses the quality in question. At the very least, Renoir clearly associated the unique fan shapes in his paintings with Japan. Concerning the way he believed an artist should imitate nature directly rather than artificial models, he wrote in his manuscript for his Grammar, his manifesto on art, written in 1883-1884: “The Japanese have certainly taken their fans [crossed out] screens from the wing of a butterfly, otherwise they would have made them round or oval.” (paragraph 142, in Robert L. Herbert, Nature’s Workshop: Renoir’s Writings on the Decorative Arts, Yale, 2000:150)
The luxuriant combination of these two chromatic qualities, one earthy and diffused as in fan painting, and one highly reflective of light and silken as in ceramic surfaces---characterizes Renoir’s work. They also, not coincidentally, relate to the two crafts which Renoir spent his formative years, first in porcelain décor for Lévy-Frères, and then in decorative painting with his own elder brother, Henri. Oshima Seiji, an early researcher of primary sources on japonisme (past director of the Setagaya Art Museum), in his Japonisme — Impressionism, Ukiyo-e, and their Milieu (ジャポニスム: 印象派と浮世絵の周辺, Kodansha, 1992), devotes a whole chapter to Renoir, in which he suggests that Renoir, having worked in a ceramic factory, and later painting specifically sensu-type fans, was most likely to have been in a position where he could acquire at least some knowledge of Oriental art. (1992: 188)
While this period of Renoir’s life is often passed over as a time of primarily Rococo style influence, the fact that he spent a good number of years, from the ages of 13 to 17 or so in porcelain design, and afterwards a few more years for his brother engaged in fan painting and other decorative work, must have left an indelible impression upon his aesthetic sensibilities. The Rococo style, despite its image of being an insulated European aristocratic phenomenon, especially the decorative style, was in no small way a product of what is usually called ‘chinoiserie’—but which in reality was in good part influenced by a ‘japonaiserie’ of Imari porcelain, sensu folding fans, urushi (lacquer) ware, and kimonos (see on this website ‘18th Century Japonisme’). These were sought after by royal courts and aristocratic families for their distinctive design and chromatic qualities, differing from the Chinese and recognized as such, consciously imitated and incorporated into European decorative arts by porcelain designers and ébénistes.
Furthermore, porcelain and fan design in Renoir’s early days was not immune to the wave of Japanese crafts entering Europe from the 1850’s onward. That is to say, the crafts that Renoir was engaged in, with a strong Rococo influence, were intrinsically connected to the chromatic aesthetics of the Far East from their beginnings, and in that sense an aspect of Eastern aesthetic sensibility was almost inevitably absorbed by Renoir to at least some extent, which moreover converged with the renewed influence of Japanese art in the 19th century.
His 'Girl with a Fan' (c. 1881, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA), below left, once again reflects the aesthetic combination of the two clusters of qualities we associated with the fan vs. the vase, or here chrysanthemums. On the one side a fan that is clearly a uchiwa fan, done in the sui-sai style; and the Japanese chrysanthemums reaching high above the girl (cropped in the image here), flowers that were becoming all the rage in Europe---a fad that would spread with equal if not greater popularity in America, thanks to their vibrant color and luxuriant forms. These colors and forms were not by accident as in nature, but cultivated to be so over the centuries, genetically controlled and carefully crafted, if you will, not so unlike the ceramic arts.
On the right is his 'Young Woman with a Japanese Umbrella' (1876, private collection), and this too, seems to reflect the same combination of a bright ceramic along with the subdued diffusion of painted paper craft. The Japanese umbrella, constructed of oil coated and painted paper, designed with open, uncolored spaces, allows light to pass through and illuminate the orange color; while the woman's blue and white dress possesses a fineness and brilliance that reminds one of classic 'blue-and-white' china, from China or Japan.
Another painting of Renoir's that invites examination in relation to the ‘Young Woman with a Japanese Umbrella’ is his ‘A Girl (or Woman) gathering Flowers' (c.1872-74, Clark Art Institute), shown below. John House, well-regarded scholar of 19th century French art and curator of several Renoir exhibits, speaking in regards to the: “preoccupation with the effects of open-air light and colour” in Renoir’s 1882 exhibit of his works, focuses upon this painting also depicting a Japanese parasol:
“…most interesting in the present context is Woman gathering Flowers (Femme cueillant des fleurs) of about 1874; its treatment reveals Renoir’s acute awareness of the social and cultural meanings of the subjects and sites he chose. … The young woman stands stiffly amid a flowery meadow, a bunch of flowers in her hand and her fashionable Japanese-style parasol at her feet; her costume shows that she is a parisienne, while the awkwardness of her stance suggests that she feels ill at ease amid the lavish natural growth of the meadow.” (Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883, The National Gallery, London, 2007:15)
The parasol (which is visibly of the kind exported or brought over from Japan at the time and likely not of European or other Asian manufacture), just as in Renoir’s ‘Young Woman with a Japanese Umbrella’, is not just a prop for added exotic interest; it is a critical element in creating the kind of color balance and variety in open air light that Renoir was aiming for, in a picture that would otherwise become too subdued, or almost bland without it. That it is a Japanese parasol, not an opaque European one, with its peculiar translucent quality, passing light and creating a natural luminosity and harmony of color, is what makes it a truly apropos element in creating the total, desired effect of the picture. Indeed, the Japanese parasol is emblematic, a perfect symbol (and who knows, even inspirational) of Renoir’s ideal synthesis of light and color.
Something similar might be said of the sensu folding fan in Renoir’s well-known ‘Dance in the Country’ (1883, Musée d’Orsay). It also is of paramount importance in defining the character of the picture. Despite its blurred aspect, the fan (held by Renoir’s future wife) is most likely Japanese in manufacture given its compositional layout and general design, and confirms what we have discussed regarding Renoir’s expression of that ‘kogei aesthetic’ of Japanese paper crafts. The particular popularity of this painting, among his images of dancing couples, is of course attributable to multiple aspects of its charm, but no doubt one of them, and something that makes the image stand out so, is the strongly felt presence of the fan. The fan provides the paper kogei chromatics contrasting with the figure of Aline and her dress which provides the fine, porcelain-like sheen in the balancing act of the two qualities.
Taking a look at a few other examples of his fans, it seems they too reflect Japanese fan design qualities. Below to the left is detail from 'A Lady with a Fan' (1906, private collection), a painting of an alluring and splendidly dressed young woman who hardly seems to have a connection with Japan; except that her sensu fan emits the typical luster of a decorative-type sensu, often surfaced with combinations of gold or silver mixed with rich greens, purples, reds, and the like, to produce a similar subtle glow. It is more Japanese in effect than Rococo; but in any case, the Rococo folding fan is an evolution from the imported sensu as mentioned earlier; indeed, Japanese fans were highly regarded and sought after in Ming era China, reaching Europe primarily via Portugal and Spain in the late 16th and 17th century, and were even depicted in early Baroque era Italian paintings of Japanese emissaries such as Hasekura Tsunenaga, done by Archita Ricci in 1615 (see ‘18th Century Japonisme’ on this website for a detailed discussion and references on this topic).
But perhaps even more intriguing is Renoir’s ‘Portrait of Madame Hartmann’ (1874, Musée d’Orsay), below, where the sensu fan is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Note first the pose of Madame Hartmann, then the composition of the bulky form of the dress, with its heavy complex folds and how it fills much of the canvas. Observe the finely distributed gradations of chromatic tone on the dress. Add to that its surprisingly restrained chromatic elegance, i.e., ‘shibui’ chromatics for Renoir (we will discuss a few other examples of this later), emphasizing black and light blue, with a reddish brown added for accent. All this suggests the possible influence of ‘aizuri-e’ (藍摺絵, literally ‘blue printed pictures’ where the picture is primarily in a blue ink thickened or thinned to varying tones), such as by Keisai Eisen, of which ‘Kashiku of the Tsuruya’ (1830s, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), is a typical example, shown below next to Madame Hartmann.
Various aspects of the ukiyo-e aizuri style seem to have been subtly transformed in Renoir’s picture. Nevertheless, we can still make out the correspondences: not only of the central subject, her pose and massing of volumes and angles, but even the existence of a partially hidden, smaller and younger secondary subject. In Renoir it is the girl playing the piano hidden by the piano and cropped off on the left edge of the picture so that we see only her face and part of her dress; in Eisen it is the girl mostly hidden in the folds of the kimono. In both cases, they may go unnoticed at first glance.
The wall in Renoir with its patterned, mixed tones of blue and an off-white (like that of woodblock prints) is an artful inversion of the aizuri chromatic to the background, while the black mass of the dress provides the contrasting uniformity which in the aizuri-e is provided by the surrounding empty spaces. In other words, the chromatic intricacy (dress) vs. chromatic uniformity (backdrop) is reversed---or rather we should say mixed, for Madame Hartmann’s dress, while monochrome, maintains the level of complexity of volume, line, and tone gradations of an aizuri-e. Renoir has reformulated it with restraint in a typically French bourgeois setting, fully assimilating and synthesizing the aizuri aesthetic with that of his own. As an added observation, the overall ‘shibui’ quality of the picture also is reminiscent of ‘surimono’, which were privately commissioned, limited edition woodblock prints, employing luxury materials like metallic dust in combination with fine embossing.
When one actively starts looking, a good number of Japanese ‘clues’ can be found in Renoir's paintings. They at times reflect his personal artistic choice, or at other times simply the prevalence of Japanese art and crafts to be found in French homes at the time. In either case, the influence of Japanese art was an inescapable reality for Renoir, whether in the homes of his intimate friends and Japanophiles, such as the Monets, leading to works such as his ‘Portrait of Madame Monet Reading’ (c. 1874, Clark Art Institute), or when deciding to paint his own son holding a Japanese sensu fan, as in ‘Coco à l'éventail japonais’ (1906, private collection).---A painting whose title, by the way, among others by Renoir like it, often undergo a ‘genericization’ in English, despite clear cultural identifications in the original French.
It has been suggested that Renoir's japonisme was one more of indirect influence coming from his circle of friends and patrons, such as the Charpentiers or Theophile Gautier, whose daughter Renoir had a strong romantic interest in, and as the late Sophie Monneret, prolific scholar at the École du Louvre wrote, "Renoir probably was in love with this passionate admirer of Japan and Wagner". (Monneret, Renoir, Konecky & Konecky, 1990:10) It was this omnipresent craze for Japan among cultural elites, that was starting to become a bourgeois fad, which aroused in Renoir a counter-reaction to it; not because Japanese art was not instructive for him, but because he was a spirited individualist and disliked excessive and unquestioning infatuation, just as he found a blind adulation of Greek ideals of beauty to be nonsense.
There are a few particular anecdotes that form the basis of the argument against Japanese influence in the case of Renoir, and we should first address them, before going any further. Francois Fosca’s Renoir (H. N. Abrams, 1969, transl. M. Martin), is a typical case:
“…it is worth remarking that he [Renoir] never shared the passion for Japanese art so general about 1865. According to himself, he was put off it by Madame Charpentier’s rooms, which she had filled with japonaiseries, as was currently fashionable. ‘During the exhibition of 1889, my friend Burty took me to see some Japanese prints. I won’t deny that there were some very fine things there; but when I came out of the gallery I saw a Louis XIV chair upholstered in a simple little bit of tapestry, and there couldn’t have been anything more simple, I would have embraced that chair.’
On another occasion, when Vollard asked him if the Impressionists had been influenced by Japanese prints, he replied: ‘Unfortunately yes, at first. Japanese prints are certainly very interesting, as Japanese prints---in other words, as long as they stay in Japan. A people should not appropriate what belongs to another race; in so doing, they are apt to make stupid mistakes. There would soon be a kind of universal art, without any individual characteristics. I once thanked a critic who had written that I belonged unmistakably to the French school. “And if I am pleased to belong to the French school,” I told him, it is not because I wish to assert its superiority over all other schools, but because, since I am a Frenchman, I should belong to my own country.” ’ (Fosca, Renoir,1969: 272)
These tidbits, circulating much like the apocryphal story of the discovery of Hokusai used as wrapping paper (when in fact it was a booklet, according to Bracquemond, included in the package, probably as an added gift by the seller), is the entirety of the argument provided the naysayers, and all of it coming from Ambroise Vollard. Yet as other scholars have pointed out, such as Ronald Pickvance, the “reported conversations with the artist are not always to be trusted” (Pickvance, ‘Monet and Renoir in the mid-1870s’, Japonisme in Art: An International Symposium, 1980:159). Robert L. Herbert, in his invaluable study of Renoir’s own writings (Nature’s Workshop: Renoir’s Writings on the Decorative Arts, Yale, 2000), many unpublished until then, discovered that, although Vollard “published sentences as though Renoir were speaking directly to him”, these were taken from certain specific paragraphs from a draft of Renoir’s, and “Vollard interlarded them with supposed questions of his own.” (Herbert, 2000:158). That is to say, he literally made-up portions of his conversations with Renoir, incorporating some of Renoir’s writings using a cut and paste approach.
Interestingly, Vollard also records that Renoir “knew Hayashi Tadamasa very well” (in Pickvance, 1980: 169)---Hayashi being an instrumental figure in introducing and explaining Japanese art to European critics, collectors, and artists. But the idea of Renoir spending time with Hayashi seems to be at odds with his supposed disdain for Japanese art.
Furthermore, the questions Vollard supposedly asked Renoir show a blatant priming for a negative response. For instance: “Didn’t the Impressionists allow themselves to be too much influenced by foreign schools? Japanese art, for instance?” (Vollard, Renoir: An Intimate Record, Knopf 1925, Dover 1990: 28) In a limited search of Vollard’s writings and biographical material, nowhere has this author found a positive comment about Japan by Vollard himself, except for a light comment on Okakura Kakuzo’s TheBook of Tea in the bibliography for his book on Renoir. Might it be that what he portrays as Renoir’s opinion about Japan was perhaps culled and magnified from a more complex attitude, and ultimately a reflection of Vollard’s personal opinions than Renoir’s---in a classic case of psychological projection?
Instead we should listen to Renoir himself, what he himself wrote for his contemporaries or posterity. While he abhorred mindless imitation of the art of others, he felt Japan’s example was of paramount importance, writing in his Grammar (1883-1884), “Dedicated to all those who love art and those who wish to make a career out of it”:
“What's necessary is to turn our attention to it in order to emulate it, but certainly not to do any copying. You need to go and see beautiful Japanese things and ask yourself why they are beautiful. Use the same means to do everything else.” (paragraph 23, in Herbert, 2000: 127)
This point is emphasized repeatedly:
“We must do as the Japanese: love and copy nature without ceasing, but with our French eye, in order to equal their strength by the same means, the only right ones, without resembling them in any way. In copying them we would be making pseudo-Japanese.” (paragraph 45, in Herbert, 2000: 132)
This is a far cry from the way Vollard portrays it. We will hear much more from Renoir himself on Japan later, but in the meantime, the above should suffice for the reader to take Vollard’s version of things with a grain of salt. Yet almost every biography of Renoir that waives serious consideration of Japanese influence ignores Renoir’s own writings, and instead includes Vollard’s. There are though, certain authors, perhaps sensing the truth, though not necessarily comfortable with it, that offer a token example of that influence. The American painter Walter Pach (who had met Renoir in person), in his description of 'Two Little Circus Girls', now better known as ‘Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando’ (1879, Art Institute of Chicago), concludes cryptically, at the end of his commentary on the piece:
"Much of the planning of this picture is due to the influence of Japanese art, which in the seventies was the great catalyst to the art of the Western world." (Renoir, 1950, edition of 1983: 62)
If that be the case, his discussion of it, contained in that one sentence, must be called extraordinarily brief. The German art historian-writer Bruno F. Schneider, in his Renoir (Crown, 1958), admits two examples where he considers Japanese ukiyo-e to be a transformative factor for Renoir, though somewhat begrudgingly:
“The Lady with Veil [1877, Orsay] too differs as far as colour is concerned, from the work of previous years. The delicate pastel shades hardly recall the past at all, and the plane composition of the picture, the conspicuous emptiness of the right half, point rather to Japanese influences, which indeed was rife everywhere after the World Exhibition in Paris in 1867, with its Oriental pavilions. … Renoir himself did not like the subtle colour harmonies of the Japanese woodcuts, but that does not exclude the possibility that in his new uncertainty he borrowed his pastel shades from the Japanese.” (Schneider, 1958: 66)
That painting, and ‘Dance in the Town’ (or ‘City’, 1883, Musée d’Orsay), are the works Schneider sees a Japanese influence. In Dance in the Town (City), he writes:
“Mural ideas have a stronger effect in this picture, and the economical colouring of the large areas
is again influenced by Japanese coloured woodcuts.” (Schneider, 1958: 71)
As we saw in Renoir’s painting of Madame Hartmann, the ‘shibui’ aesthetic seems to appear on and off from at least around 1874, and for the next decade or so, in paintings such as these.
But Schneider is quick to add: “This Eastern art, however, did not have a lasting influence on Renoir; he only made use of it while he was in search of new creative principles.” ---Though it would seem that any source, if key in finding “new creative principles”, that is an influence that is catalytic, should be considered of long-lasting significance.
This naysaying would only worsen towards the end of the 20th century, where the peculiar trend arose that those who denied, or simply ignored the Japanese influence upon Impressionism, were best received by publishers and academics, at least in the English-speaking world. For instance, Anne Distel, in her Renoir: A Sensuous Vision (H. N. Abrams,1995), starts Chapter III, "Success and Maturity" with the categorical statement:
"Of all the Impressionists, Renoir was the least affected by the craze for things Japanese that so strongly marked this generation of artists. Nevertheless, by placing a cheap Japanese fan in the hands of his young model (probably the actress Jeanne Samary) in 1881, for once he gave in to the fashion, painting a "Japanese Parisian." (1995: 61, italics added)
Was the fan indeed cheap, a 19th century version of Japanese transistor radios that flooded France in the 1960’s and 70's? It should be needless to say that true artistry and artistic inspiration is not a matter of money paid. Or if she is referring to the quality of the fan, what we have here is simply bias (no less than that of her mentor, John Rewald, who in his History of Impressionism, describes ukiyo-e bijinga prints as “insipid”, MoMA, 1973: 208). Her assertion that Renoir gave in to a fashion, as if it were a bad habit or the wearing of bellbottoms, and just once, is surely false, as we have already repeatedly shown. For Renoir in fact gave in frequently to the Japanese fashion throughout the years, just as Monet did, not only to Japanese fans, but to a host of porcelains, umbrellas, kimonos and other inexpensive Japanese crafts. Japanese ukiyo-e prints too, were relatively cheap, compared to buying European paintings, perhaps to Distel’s satisfaction.
But the influence of japonisme was not simply a direct one from the assimilation of the aesthetic qualities of Japanese artifacts. Renoir was, it does seem, also influenced by ‘japoniste’ painting by European artists depicting motifs or ideas associated with Japan, such as those by Whistler, but in a more mutated form. This seems to be quite clear in Renoir's 'Rapha Maître' (1871, private collection), shown below, left. Rapha, while pensively holding a Japanese fan in her hand, is otherwise neither dressed in a Japanese kimono, nor surrounded by Japanese goods as in Whistler's painting, ‘Princess from the Land of Porcelain’ (1864, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art)---and yet there is an undeniable similarity, a sort of ‘family resemblance’, to borrow a phrase from the philosopher Wittgenstein.
Each recognizably Japanese element has been replaced, if it were, by something different, but that functions in a similar way, with similar effect. Instead of a shimmering silver kimono, hanging heavily in vertical layers, we have a shimmering exotic gold dress, layered horizontally, with sleeves suggestive of kimono sleeves. Both emphasize the slender, flat chested verticality of the women, and the weight of their dresses spreading on the floor (which, by the way, is characteristic of the sub-genre of ukiyo-e female portraiture known as ‘tate-e’, literally meaning ‘vertical’ or ‘upright’ picture). The angle and shadows of the face are not so dissimilar despite the light coming from almost opposite directions; and the small delicate hands only partially visible in both Renoir and Whistler, remind us of the tiny hands in ‘bijinga’ (ukiyo-e ‘beauties’), so lightly holding their uchiwa fans, whose designs are very much of the same floral style.
The correspondences or substitutions extend beyond the figures themselves. In Renoir's image, a leafy plant with one strong stem and large leaves shoots up asymmetrically reminiscent of designs in Japanese picture books (e.g. Utamaro's book of plants and insects, Ehon mushi erami, 1788), substituting for the floral designs on the byobu screen in the background in Whistler. Whistler’s floral designs likewise emphasize singular stems, but with the smaller flowers Renoir asserts a ‘un-Japanese’ arrangement. The floor is barren in Renoir, but the wallpaper serves the need for backdrop color and complexity, in place of the carpet and screen in Whistler, but each picture keeps a certain surface bare, the floor in Renoir and the walls beyond the byobu screen in Whistler. And that angular byobu screen is replicated by the angle of the bird cage in Renoir.
Gabriel Weisberg also suggests Japanese influence on Renoir may have been transmitted through the works of his circle of japonisant artist friends. Referring to Renoir’s intimate friendship with the Monets, Weisberg writes:
“The famous La Japonaise, 1876 (Boston Museum of Fine Arts), Monet’s painting of his wife wrapped in a spectacular Japanese-appliqued cloth with fans on the wall behind her, is the one fashionable and obvious [Japan influenced] picture that he painted in this period. Renoir, Monet's friend, was sensitive to Japanese color but his compositions are less innovative than Monet's; where we see traces of Japonisme they may have come from the works of his friends rather than directly from the Japanese. An admiration for Japanese art is seen most clearly in the use Renoir made of fans, screens, and silks in his portraits, particularly those of Monet's wife.” (Japonisme, 1975: 119)
A less obvious case, but in true japonisme style ‘à la Renoir’ is ‘Madam Monet on a Sofa’ or otherwise known as ‘Camille Monet Reading Le Figaro‘, (1872-1874, Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon). According to Sophie Monneret (who, by the way, twice garnered the Academie Francaise prize Charles Blanc for her histories on Impressionism, and authored major encyclopedic works on the subject), in her biography of Renoir: “In Madam Monet on a Sofa, small fluid touches are woven together in clear bright tones. Painted in 1872, the picture is a reference to the craze for Japan that was sweeping Paris (and elsewhere) at the time.” (Monneret, Renoir, Éditions du Chêne 1989, Barrie & Jenkins, transl. by E. Read, 1990: 49)
While Francesca Castellani, Associate Professor at Iuav University Venice (History of Contemporary Art), describes it thus in her Renoir: His Life and Works: “This portrait of Monet’s wife is like a Japanese silk-screen, embellished with light-filled touches of color. The composition is solidly structured on horizontals and is animated by unexpected small differences in perspective in the dress, which is flattened against the white divan.” (Castellani, Arnoldo Mondadori 1996, English 1998: 78)
Despite Madam Monet not specifically wearing one, it is an image which echoes those of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and other paintings of European women in kimonos. But this is exactly Renoir’s approach---an absorption of Japanese artistic principles and japonisme themes, then remade in his own way, usually avoiding a direct transfer of motifs.
Placed side by side with some of Whistler’s well-known paintings, such as ‘Caprice in Purple and Gold: The Golden Screen’ (1864, Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art), and ‘Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks’ (1864, Philadelphia Museum of Art), one may sense the connection. Except that Renoir has taken a subtler, more metaphorical approach, where it is Madam Monet herself, with her blue dress and white sofa, that have been merged into one and transformed implicitly into a ‘Lange Lijzen’—Dutch meaning ‘Long Ladies’—referring to blue-and-white Chinese porcelain with images of slender women. Another painting (not shown) where a figure exhibits a fine porcelain quality is ‘In the Rose Garden’ or ‘In the Roses’ (1882, Private collection, Las Vegas, not to be mistaken for his other works with a similar title), of a woman sitting on a garden bench. Her face and dress emit a purplish luminosity very much like a porcelain figure under a bright light.
A more literal case of japonisme is ‘Madame Georges Charpentier and her Children’ (1878, MET), below, in her ‘Japanese room’ exemplifying the japonaiserie style salon culture and décor of the day. Besides the numerous Japanese objets d’art, it once again illustrates Renoir’s mix of the two types of Japanese aesthetic; the more diffused, earthy aesthetic provided by the kakemono (hanging scroll) paintings covering the entire back wall, which sets the primary chromatic theme, with the children's dress in the left foreground balancing with the blue and white porcelain in the right background together providing the finer, porcelain chromatics to the picture.
It is a piece that squarely merits discussion in the context of the larger japonisme movement, if just for the various Japanese motifs in the picture; yet surprisingly, there are authors such as Distel who skirt all mention of Japan in regards to it, including the fact that the Charpentiers, generous patrons of Renoir, had a great passion for things Japanese, even that Madame Charpentier's drawing room was expressly decorated to be a ‘Japanese room’. Yet as Robert Herbert (professor of art at Yale University and after professor emeritus at Mount Holyoke College), points out:
“The most conspicuous appearance of japonism in his [Renoir’s] own painting is in the large canvas of 1878, Mme. Georges Charpentier and her Children, where the Charpentiers’ own Japanese objects are featured. When exhibited in the Salon of 1879, the painting’s success among critics showed Renoir’s integration of japonism with the tradition of Titian and Delacroix. Of course he spurned the mere imitation of Japanese objects, although he honored the Charpentiers’ contributions to the vogue. What one should admire, he wrote is the principle observed by Japanese craftspeople, that of inspiration from nature.” (Herbert, 2000: 24).
And it was probably often in the Japanese room that ”rubbed elbows” with intellectuals known in Paris for their keen interest in Japan, such as Emile Zola and Edmond de Goncourt, among a host of others, at Marguerite Charpentier’s prestigious soirées (Herbert, 2000, Preface xiii).
‘Madam Georges Charpentier and her Children’, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
Because of Renoir's rich and thick painterly qualities, with both an intense mixing and mosaic like distinctiveness of colors, best achieved in oils, his paintings do not feel Japanese, despite the influence (but then again, same could be said of van Gogh). But when we include the chromatic and textural qualities of ceramics, paper crafts, textiles and other ‘kogei’, alongside the diverse graphic imagery provided by ‘ukiyo-e’ in print and picture book (‘ehon’) form, as two distinct artistic sources, we can see how they might come together in a powerful imaginative fusion contributing to the unique character of his works.
That combined aesthetic effect may be at work in Renoir’s ‘Wave’ (1879, Art Institute of Chicago), unusual among his works for its stormy and dynamic nature. Francesca Castellani writes regarding the piece:
"This view which revolves around the impressive, majestic movement of the wave rolling back onto itself, is reminiscent of Courbet's seascapes: romanticizing the interpretation of the storm, with a solid texture that grows thicker around the crest or the deep blue of the sea. However, one also notes the influence of Japanese prints, such as Hokusai's wave at Kanagawa." (Renoir: His Life and Works, 1998:137)
Colin B. Bailey, British art historian with a focus on Renoir, and Director of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, offers the following insights into the ‘Wave’:
“Anticipating Monet’s ‘coastscapes’ by two years, Renoir’s Wave
looked to realist painting and Japanese art as its models.”
Noting how Courbet’s seascapes of the late 1860’s was one likely inspiration for the painting, Bailey, more balanced in his consideration of sources, also notes that: “although Vollard recalled Renoir dismissing Japanese prints in no uncertain terms, in the 1870s at least he [Renoir] had been sufficiently interested in them to engage in conversations on the subject with no less a connoisseur than Philippe Burty.” And adds with a refreshing forthrightness:
"Hokusai’s Great Wave from the series Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji
stands as an ukiyo-e godfather to Renoir’s entire series.”
(Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883, The National Gallery, London, 2007:200)
Like Hokusai, who made many other illustrations of waves besides his iconic ‘Great Wave’ (e.g. scattered throughout his Manga, or in Modern Designs for Combs and Pipes Vol.1), so did Renoir, producing like the ukiyo-e master, waves of differing turbulence, magnitude, and impact with rock or shore, and in differing proximity and angle as can be seen in works ranging from his ‘The Wave’ of 1882, at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens (Memphis), to his ‘Marine, Guernsey’ (1883, Musée d’Orsay).
Bailey concludes: “It is Renoir’s seamless integration of such sources [i.e., Courbet and Hokusai] in the service of a poetic naturalism that is so impressive here.” Yet we should also point out, as scholars such as Oshima Seiji might have argued, the philosophical underpinnings of Renoir’s mature poetic naturalism probably arose in no small part from his encounter with Japanese art and the worldview he found within it. Jean Renoir, in his biography of his father the painter, provides the following comments his father made, which shed light on the connection between Renoir’s poetic naturalism and Japan:
"There isn't a person, a landscape, or a subject that doesn't possess at least some interest - although sometimes more or less hidden. When a painter discovers this hidden treasure, other people immediately exclaim at its beauty. Old Corot opened our eyes to the beauty of the Loing, which is a river like any other; and I am sure that the Japanese landscape is no more beautiful than other landscapes. But the point is that Japanese painters knew how to bring out their hidden treasure." (J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, transl. R. and D. Weaver, Little Brown, 1962: 222).
What is appealing about Renoir’s painting is that it combines the decorative and the poetic---which may also be considered the defining characteristic of Japanese decorative art.
The colors of Renoir’s ‘Wave’, with its dominating, extreme rich blues with greens were colors favored by Hokusai in his landscape scenes, however textured and thickly painted by Renoir. At the same time, they are very much akin to Japanese ceramic glazes and cloisonné enamel, which often have a raised, textured aspect, producing deep, rich colors, with metals such as silver also applied.
A great number and variety of vases, dishes, and other porcelains and pottery was exported to Europe by ceramicists such as Makuzu Kozan, to name one among a variety of kilns, precisely around this time. Shown below next to Renoir’s ‘Wave’ is the Makuzu ‘Vase’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, though not precisely dated, either from the late Edo or early Meiji, representative of the hues produced at the time. In any case, well before the Meiji period, during the early 19th century, large ceramic picture plates, ‘o-zara’, made for display, such as ‘Ko-Kutani’ (old Kutani) wares, are characterized by similar combinations of blues, greens, and whites, where waves are a classic design pattern. Japanese earthenware tea bowls of greater antiquity also share something in common with Renoir’s wave paintings. Among the works of the versatile Honami Koetsu (1558–1637), key figure in the development of Japanese design and aesthetics, is his tea bowl ‘Fujisan’ (early 17th century, Sunritz Hattori Museum), a designated ‘national treasure’ of Japan. Its archetypal design has influenced tea ceremony aesthetics and ceramics down the centuries, and although considered to symbolize the famous Mount Fuji, it also conveys the impression of a vast, turbulent ocean.
Another Renoir piece using very different colors, but also possessing a ceramic quality is his ‘Garden in the rue Cortot, Montmartre’ (1876, Carnegie Museum of Art). Christopher Riopelle, Curator of Post-1800 Paintings at the National Gallery, London, discussing Monet’s influence on “the collapse of the space between foreground and middle ground” in the work, observes:
“That spatial effect, along with the insistently vertical format of the canvas and the absence of horizon, also suggest a decorative intent not unrelated to such characteristics of Japanese prints as pictorial flatness.” (Renoir Landscapes: 1865 - 1883, The National Gallery, London, 2007: 184)
The flatness, the ‘insistently vertical format’, the absence of horizon, the generally decorative effect, as well as the combination of bright coloring on a subdued mixed tone backdrop, is also, by the way, quite reminiscent of Meiji era Japanese ceramic floral designs, such as those enameled on patinaed bronze.
In that respect, Renoir’s ‘Wave’ in terms of its ‘ceramic aesthetic’, though very different in every other aspect from the Garden, provides an interesting juxtaposition to it. While the Garden conveys quiet and stillness in a format and color scheme almost diametrically opposed to the dynamic Wave, which is a landscape work, the two nevertheless have a compatible decorative effect characteristic of Japan.
If we wish to focus more upon the purely ceramic quality of Renoir’s paintings, we find it often manifests itself strongly in the backdrop of his subject matter. His ‘Tama, the Japanese Dog’, (1876, Clark Art Institute), a particularly favored pet and also the subject of a Monet painting, provides an excellent example of this. By the way, the painting also demonstrates once again, the breadth of things Japanese integrated into Renoir’s art, including flora and fauna. We find the presence not only of porcelains, fans, umbrellas, and hanging scrolls in his work, but also Japanese chins (Tama’s breed) and a variety of Japanese chrysanthemums, which we will discuss shortly.
Below, to the left of Tama is a close up of the upper left side of the same painting. Compare that with the ‘Flower Vase’ (late 18th century) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to the right of Tama. This Satsuma ware is covered with mottled glaze which produces a chromatic effect remarkably similar, almost indistinguishable from Renoir’s backdrop. In fact, the vase is but one example that could be chosen from many thousands like it, in endless variations of a theme, coming from a variety of regional kilns such as Bizen-yaki or Shigaraki-yaki, to name a few, using techniques such as ‘hai-kaburi’ (灰かぶり, ash glaze), where the kiln's wood ash creates a richly textured glaze with earthy tones in black, muted greens, yellows, and iron browns.
Renoir was not alone in his probable assimilation of Japanese kogei aesthetics. He was part of a shared awakening among European artists, though ahead of many, and perhaps more subtle and transformative in his incorporation of Japanese ceramic derived aesthetics into his work. His rich range of greens from an almost luminescent aquamarine to a lighter yellow-green in his 'Jeune filles à la corbeille de fleurs' (c.1890, previously private collection, present whereabout undetermined), shown below, seems to reflect the popularity of such chromatics that adorned a great quantity of Meiji export ceramics flowing into Europe. These were emulated by European ceramic artists, as in the case of the piece to the right, 'View of Mount Fuji' (1900/01, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal) by Clément Massier.
Are Renoir’s female portraits and floral still-life creations, each a kind of metamorphosis of the other, his flowers a kind of feminine portraiture, and vice versa? Is it cliché because it is so true? The ‘Portrait of the Actress Jeanne Samary’ (1877/78, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow) below left, has both a porcelain-like sheen and floral freshness in one; the 'Bouquet of Chrysanthemums and a Japanese Fan' (1880, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts) below center, shares something of it. The pink background has an astonishing intensity and melds and meshes together with the head of Jeanne Samary, into one inseparable ‘human bouquet'. The vase = the dress, the flowers = the woman; ---a simple equation, but perhaps true, and in Renoir’s work the repeated appearance of Japanese chrysanthemums and vases suggest they have a meaningful place in his vision of beauty. To the right, though not a ceramic piece, we have placed Kitagawa Utamaro’s ‘Stone Bridge’ (1801, Art Institute of Chicago) for perspective. It depicts a scene from Kabuki. Here too, we see a meshing together of pink chrysanthemums and a woman with pink hair (in fact part of her costume) into one, analogous to, but more literally, than Renoir. And who knows, if one scans the Samary picture for underlayers, one might actually find something like it there.
Among the Art Institute of Chicago’s meticulous research papers and insightful descriptions of its holdings, is the following regarding ‘Chrysanthemums’ (1881/82), under the heading ‘Chrysanthemum: Flower of the Artist-Gardener’:
“As Chrysanthemums attests, Renoir’s interest in the flower as an artistic subject can be dated to at least the early 1880s. He may have had the opportunity to admire paintings of the flower by Claude Monet made in 1878 and 1881. A bouquet of chrysanthemum blossoms provides an extraordinarily ebullient setting for Renoir’s painting of the red-haired model Jeanne Samary, A Girl with a Fan, circa 1881. In this case the flowers complement the taste for Japonisme suggested by the fan in Samary’s hand.”
What follows is an excellent synopsis of Renoir’s ‘Chrysanthemum’ in the historical context of the Japanese chrysanthemum’s adaptation into French culture:
“First imported to France from the Far East during the French Revolution, chrysanthemums are a late summer flower appreciated for their strong scent and exceptional range of color and shape. Referenced in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), in the early twentieth century they were still considered an exotic Japanese feature of French gardens. Notably, Renoir’s Chrysanthemums includes two blossom varieties, each with different color and petal shape—the orange starburst variety with a long, straight petal and the white blossom variety with a shorter, denser petal that gives it a spherical appearance.”
The Museum further identifies Renoir’s painting as related to specific Hokusai images, and its undeniable connection to japonisme:
“This mixture of blossom varieties is a feature of the celebrated Japanese woodblock print by Hokusai, Chrysanthemums and Bee and further adds to the Japonisme of Renoir’s painting. In Hokusai’s print the distinctive flat leaf of the chrysanthemum provides visual contrast with the intricate blossoms. The leaf plays an analogous role in Renoir’s Chrysanthemums, which takes full advantage of the color and textural potential of the celebrated flower to produce a still-life painting of sublime authority.” (Renoir Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cat. 15. Chrysanthemums, 1881/82, at publications.artic.edu/renoir)
Moreover, Renoir's underdrawings reflect Japanese-inspired spatial arrangements, with flattened planes and specific, intimate perspectives. And as the Institute’s commentary points out, he shared the Japanese appreciation for the plant's distinctive, varied forms, combining different blossom types, such as long, starburst petals and dense, spherical ones, within a single arrangement. We see this in the three examples provided below. From the number and intensity of his paintings of Japanese chrysanthemums, it is clear they possessed a unique aesthetic significance for him, and a quality that does not appear with such fullness and richness in his other floral still-lifes.
The brightening of color, that was a defining characteristic of Impressionism, is discussed by Gabriel Weisberg in the following terms:
“The freshness of Japanese color thus inspired French painters to seek color boldly in their observation of the motif. This is particularly true of Monet, most of whose works in the sixties were not particularly bright, since he was seeking a harmony of light. In 1871 he bought a number of Japanese prints in Holland (earlier he was too poor to acquire them personally), and his color immediately became brighter.” (Japonisme, 1975: 118)
Likewise when we look at Renoir’s ‘Spring Bouquet’ (1866, Harvard Art Museums) shown below left, done early in his career, and compare it to his later works, such as those above, the contrast is apparent. Harvard’s gallery text describes ‘Spring Bouquet’ in the following terms: “This exuberant bouquet in a Japanese vase from early in Renoir’s career attests to the artist’s engagement with past historical traditions.”---Referring to Dutch still life traditions and 18th century French painters as Watteau and Boucher. While Harvard’s commentator calls it ‘exuberant’, and perhaps so when viewed in isolation, but relatively speaking, it has a more subdued, realist quality than his later works. And it pales in comparison on the scale of exuberance to his chrysanthemum depictions coming after his shared encounter with Monet and others of Japanese art.
To the right is the still life ‘Roses and Peonies in a Vase’ (1876, Dallas Museum of Art) for added comparison, a work in between the full exuberance of his chrysanthemums of the 1880’s and the ‘Spring Bouquet’ of the 1860’s. Once again, the vase appears to be a Japanese or Chinese vase, or one inspired by the East, with an irregular type of design associated with Japan, which seems to take priority as subject matter over the flowers; in any case the eye goes there first, and rests there longer than with the flowers. The museum commentary describes it thus:
“Here a bouquet of peonies, rosebuds, and a few other flowers burst forth from the column of a blue ceramic vase decorated with an Asian floral motif. The arrangement is precariously balanced on a dark table set within a furnished interior complete with plush red armchair and a painting in a gilded frame. Renoir played with the colors and textures of these elements, creating a continuum between the cut flowers and floral motifs on the vase and the painting in the background.” (Dallas Museum of Art website, Collections, at dma.org)
Unlike his chrysanthemum creations, the flowers require ‘bolstering’, if you will, with additional elements to create maximal artistic impact. We see the movement towards greater brightness, but the chromatic fullness of his later works has not yet been achieved, and it confirms the sense that the choice of Japanese chrysanthemums was essential in bringing out the painterly qualities he was striving for.
Indications of a conscious artistic connection between the two-dimensional visual arts and the plastic, especially ceramic arts can be found in paintings of the time, just as the link between literature and ukiyo-e is suggested in Zola’s portrait (1868) by Manet. Regarding the above painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, ‘A Studio in the Batignolles Quarter’ (1870, Musée d’Orsay), Weisberg points out in his major study on French japonisme:
“We should also recognize that there was some relationship between the decorative and the fine arts. An early testimony of this is Fantin-Latour’s painting A Studio in the Batignolles Quarter, 1870, where Manet is surrounded by, among others, Renoir, Astruc, Bazille, and Monet. … The interest of this Impressionist circle in Japanese art has already been expounded upon, so we might almost take it for granted the Oriental-looking vase at the far left with its dragon decoration, save that the vase is actually French and was made by one of the first Japonistes, Laurent Bouvier.” (Japonisme, 1975: 146)
He goes further to note that many of the better-known French ceramicists at the time started out as painters, and thus closely intertwined were the two---ceramics and painting---in authorship and aesthetic inspiration.
Regarding the subjects in the Fantin-Latour painting, sometimes referred to as the ‘Batignolles Group’, John Rewald, in his History of Impressionism, recounts how they were even called “the Japanese painters” at one time, according to Jules-Antoine Castagnary, the French art critic favorable to the Impressionists (in Rewald, 1973: 208). Thus even if Renoir himself was not a vocal advocate of japonisme, there is no denying he was surrounded by its proponents and quite immersed in it socially.
As we have suggested from the beginning, there are various clues to be found of ceramic inspired, transmedia influences upon Renoir. Below left we have in 'Bouquet in a Vase' (1878, Indianapolis Museum of Art), highly likely to be a Meiji period Satsuma export piece, with the typical white serpents/dragons in relief, writhing about on a rich red surface with gold decorative medallions, that most likely depict small scenes of the Orient, of figures or perhaps mythical animals. Unlike his chrysanthemum paintings however, it is the vase, rather than the flowers that stand out---the flowers themselves lack conviction. We might add that the vase very much recalls the kimono in Monet's painting of Madam Monet as a ‘japonaise’. Renoir seems to have been fond of this vase, because he paints it again in his ‘Peonies’ (1878, private collection), where the flowers are portrayed in a livelier manner.
In the center is the Renoir portrait of a 'Young Woman in Red Dress' (c. 1892, Tokyo Fuji Art Museum); and to its right is his ‘Geranium and Cats’ (1881, private collection). A wide ceramic pot, possibly a Satsuma-yaki jardinière, holds the geraniums, and is decorated with figures in relief that can be faintly discerned; one figure in white kneeling and pleading towards a standing figure, it seems. The cats have brocaded collars/leashes, in red---the classic color of Japanese cat collars, depicted in countless ukiyo-e prints, and the picture is filled with reds with white accents distributed around the picture. This image, together with the ‘Bouquet in a Vase’ on the left, red with their touches of white, create a surrounding not incongruous with the central painting of the ‘Young Woman in Red Dress’, which, like the two images on each side, is lightened by touches of white and areas of yellow tinted beige.
But recall also, we saw how the Japanese fan—the sensu folding fan and the roundish fixed uchiwa fan—were extremely apropos symbols of the ‘sui-sai’ or watercolor-like, diffused aspect of the ‘kogei aesthetic’ that worked its way into Renoir’s paintings. As mentioned earlier, regarding ‘Still Life with Bouquet’ (1871), the first painting of Renoir’s we looked at, Weisberg wrote that it: “shows how the color of a Japanese fan can set the tone for a whole painting.” (Japonisme, 1975:146) In his ‘Young Woman in Red Dress’ above, though a fan is nowhere to be seen, we nevertheless detect the presence of that aesthetic element.
We will not discuss here in depth the host of other observations on Renoir and Japan found elsewhere, only to mention a few examples. As Oshima notes, in Maurice Sérullaz's overview of the impressionist movement, L’ Impressionisme (1961), Renoir's ‘The First Outing’ (1876, National Gallery, London), ‘The End of Lunch’ (1879, Städel Museum, Frankfurt), ‘Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando’ (1875-76, Art Institute of Chicago, mentioned earlier), or 'La Place Clichy' ( or simply Place Clichy in English, c. 1880, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) are raised as instances of Renoir’s absorption of Japanese compositional techniques. Sérullaz comments how in contrast to the acceptance of Degas and Lautrec's compositional shifting as being inspired by Japanese prints, this is “something that surprises people in the case of Renoir.” (in Oshima, Japonisme, 1992: 189-190) Regarding ‘La Place Clichy’, the Fitzwilliam Museum, which holds it, describes:
“The blurring of the background crowd scene against the more clearly defined principal figure may owe something to photography, although the steep perspective also suggests that he may have been influenced by Japanese ukiyo-e.” (https://french-impressionists.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk)
Lesley Stevenson, in his Renoir (1991, Smithmark), points to the case of 'Madam Monet and her Son Jean in the Garden at Argenteuil’ (1874, National Gallery of Art, DC) as a prime example of Renoir’s incorporation of Japanese compositional and spatial ambiguities.
"Renoir has represented the figures of Camille Doncieux and Jean Monet from above and the effect is of a very enclosed environment. In this very flat, two-dimensional picture space he has used the kind of spatial ambiguities that French artists found in Japanese prints. Indeed, the decorative aspect of the work is quite stunning and all of the objects contained within the picture space are carefully balanced. The rooster is introduced to this end and the red of its comb reacts to dramatic effect with the bright green grass."
Stevenson follows with further commentary on the influence of Monet, though that too, in this particular regard, might be considered something in part nurtured by his absorption of Japanese print compositions. Indeed the pose of the boy is very reminiscent of a Hokusai manga pose/angle of composition which seems to have fascinated a number of Impressionist painters from Edouard Manet to Mary Cassatt (see Hokusai and Japonisme, edited by the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, Yomiuri Shinbun, 2017). Japanese examples of draftsmanship may have provided models for some of Renoir’s rough sketches. Monneret, for instance, hints that may be the case with his ‘Study of a Tree’ (1886, location unspecified) which ‘is reminiscent of Japanese stylisation’ (Renoir, 1990: 108), while Castellani finds in his ‘Fisherman’ (c. 1867-69, Durand-Ruel Archives, Paris) that “The line delineates the forms with an elegance that reminds one of Japanese graphic art.” (Renoir: His Life and Works, 1998: 15)
Regarding the influence of ukiyo-e imagery and its delineations, Robert Herbert, regarding Renoir’s painting ‘Nursing’, shown further below, recounts that:
“When Renoir's Nursing (Aline and her son Pierre) was exhibited in 1886, it was greeted by one friendly critic as though he had drawn three of Renoir's favored comparisons from the artist's Grammar. He asked the viewer to admire in the picture the charm of the primitives, the clarity of the Japanese and the mastery of Ingres." (Herbert, Nature’s Workshop, 2000:68)
The reference to “the clarity of the Japanese” most likely refers to the clear outlines, distinct colors, and vivid composition of Japanese woodblock prints. That is to say, besides Renoir’s high regard for Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and interest in the Primitive Movement, Renoir may have experimented with the clear definition characteristic of ukiyo-e prints, and Herbert points out that:
“Those same three phrases could be used to praise Children's Afternoon at Wargemont painted in 1884 shortly after the artist had mailed the "Societe des Irregularistes" to Durand-Ruel. It conforms more obviously to the idea of decorative art because the furnishings of a bourgeois interior bring forth tight drawing and clear pattern. The highly colored Caucasian carpet on the table and the chintz draperies behind it are quite flat, echoing Japanese prints, so the picture has a folkloric or "primitive" feeling, even a toylike aspect appropriate to the subject, including the visual pun of a doll held by a doll-like child. It is the kind of picture the young Seurat could have admired.” (Ibid)
We could add that the same Japanese principles can be found at work in the compositions of Matisse as well, which Renoir’s painting precedes. And in the Alte Nationalgalerie of Berlin, where the Wargemont painting is held, the museum description ( of it recognizes that:
“The many different patterns, as on a Japanese woodcut,
underline the unity of the picture surface.”
.Examples such as these should not mislead the reader to conclude that they have heard about the sum of it. Striking parallels exist, compositional, thematic, and in the particular treatment of forms, with Japanese prints and picture books collected by his close friends such as Monet; and Renoir himself, according to Rewald, owned some as well. For instance, there are echoes of Japanese poses in Renoir's bather series, of women wiping their feet or their bodies with a ‘tenugui’ (small towels used in a Japanese bath) type cloth---reminiscent of poses from popular public bath or abalone diving scenes in Japanese ukiyo-e. These are scenes which in Degas are widely recognized as a result of Japanese influence. In the case of Renoir, there is at times an even greater correspondence of detail with ukiyo-e imagery, but because it is Renoir, simply goes overlooked.
Yet the move in Impressionism towards the here and now, in contrast to classical models, in poses that reflected the relaxed, everyday postures in mundane settings found in Japanese ukiyo-e, that were instrumental in their attainment of greater artistic and perceptional freedom, was something shared by all the major impressionist artists. Renoir was no exception, even if his resulting figures would have a 17th century fleshiness and 18th century chromatic quality about them. Nicole R. Myers, Senior Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, writes that his ‘Before the Bath’ (c. 1875, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia), a mundane scene of a woman doing her toiletry:
“…would be Renoir’s first and only foray into the depiction of this everyday indoor ritual, and his composition, featuring a woman naked from the waist up, broke with standard conventions for the motif that involved little to no nudity. Renoir’s utterly novel take on this traditional theme, transferred from the Mediterranean harem to the Parisian bedroom, may have been inspired by Japanese woodblock prints of the Edo period, such as those by Utagawa Kunisada that depict women, frequently stripped to the waist, bathing and performing their toilettes in boudoirs. Though the influence of Japanese prints on the development of Impressionism, particularly in the works of Monet and Mary Cassatt, has been studied in great depth, Renoir is typically excluded from this line of inquiry.” (‘From Realism to Impressionism: Renoir’s Early Nudes’ in E. Bell and G. Shackelford, eds., Renoir: The Body, the Senses, Clark Art Institute, 2019: 81)
Again, the prevailing acceptance of Vollard’s anecdotes at face value, has effectively blocked its path. Going beyond ‘Before the Bath’, Myers suggests a much wider range of Renoir’s nudes need to be studied in relation to Japanese prints, pointing to:
“The similarities between his later outdoor bathers---chests exposed, draperies gathered at their hips, combing or fixing their hair against the backdrop of ocean or river---and those of Japanese ama divers (women who harvested pearls and shellfish) in the prints of Kunisada and Kitagawa Utamaro beg further investigation. Notably, the first owner of Before the Bath, Theodore Duret, was an early and important collector of Japanese art.” (Bell and Shackelford, 2019:81)
We might point to Monet’s print of Abalone Divers (ama) by Utagawa Kunisada, at his house in Giverny, for one. Originally a triptych, titled ‘Mitsuuji Amuses Himself by the Sea’, Part 3 (Mitsuuji isobe asobi sono san 光氏磯遊び 其三, 1859, version shown below from the British Museum), of which Monet possessed the center sheet shown here, and the left sheet of abalone divers (not shown), but not the right side portraying Mitsuuji (Les Estampes Japonaises de Monet à Giverny, text by Marie Rose Faure, Beaux Arts magazine, February 2000). Next to it we have placed Renoir’s sketch, ‘Two Bathers’ from L’Estampe Originale (1895, Metropolitan Museum of Art), in which the two women, though in different poses from the Kunisada figures, nevertheless reflects a similar, inverted composition, as if the Kunisada image was viewed from a mirror or flipped over and held up to a light.
In Kunisada the female in the foreground is wringing her hair, while in Renoir’s picture the girl is perhaps drying her foot, yet the two crouching figures with their bent knees and spread and angled feet seem to be counterparts, just as the two other figures sitting upright do; the other female abalone diver, placing her hands around her compressed knees, corresponds in Renoir’s sketch to the girl with compressed knees placing her hands around her hat. The large waves of Kunisada in the immediate background also find their counterpart in Renoir’s picture, though what they actually represent in the etching is not clear. Is it liquid or solid? Indeed, Kunisada’s waves, while we understand they must be waves from the lines and color, the tactile impression they give is of a smooth, immobile solid, a quality is passed on to Renoir, where they almost seem better understood as simply a shape deriving from the waves in Kunisada’s image. In both cases those forms are contrasted with the flat surface of the sea extending infinitely beyond. More than any direct correspondence, Renoir’s two figures, in their relationship to each other and their surroundings, are highly analogous in emotive impact to Kunisada’s figures and composition.
Given the long friendship between Monet and Renoir, it is not improbable that Renoir had the opportunity to come in contact with prints such as the one above. Indeed, there is a good degree of correspondence between certain ukiyo-e prints Monet collected, and Renoir’s portrayals of women. Some of those parallels include maternity scenes, depictions of bathing or relaxing near open water, hair grooming scenes, as well as those of female engagement in the arts.
The below detail of a print by Isoda Koryusai (1735-1790), ‘Interior of a Bathhouse’ (1770’s, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), is not one determined to be part of the collection of Monet or other artists Renoir associated with, but it is representative of countless prints like it found in European collections. The two figures, the one by Renoir on the left (‘Nude in an Armchair’, 1885-1890, private collection), depicting a nude wiping her leg near her ankle with a cloth, and the other figure by Koryusai, the one to the left among the three, of a bather wiping her ankle with a cloth---in that distinctive pose---provide an intriguing example of possible literal influences. Bathing scenes by the way, with figures in diverse poses, have a long history in Japan. Ukiyo-e artists such as Hishikawa Moronobu (17th century), Katsukawa Shunsho (18th century), and Utagawa Kuniyoshi (early-mid 19th century), to name but a few, tried their hand at this time-honored genre of art. Bath scenes are even depicted on magnificent, brightly colored byobu (folding) screens, done in the early 17th century during the Kan’ei era (1624-1644; see for instance, Yoshida Eiji, ‘Furoba no eshi’ on the history of bath pictures, in The Ukiyoe Quarterly, No. 2, 1962, Ryoku-en Shobo).
What’s more, these prints, especially those by Utamaro, though perhaps not necessarily always with a point-to-point correspondence of detail, indeed, despite the deceptively Rubenesque forms of Renoir, convey a similar sense of feminine intimacy and gentleness, uninhibited and at ease, and often a down to earth feeling of the everyday. Especially striking is, that particular, inexplicably soft ‘Utamaro-esque’ gaze, which has been unfairly judged as ‘dumb’ or ‘passive’ in Renoir’s female portraiture. Thus it seems, Renoir did not just adopt at times the markedly delineated aspects of ukiyo-e; rather he absorbed the ideal of femininity expressed in the art---and should anyone have the title, surely it is Renoir that deserves it: ‘The Utamaro of the West’.
Renoir’s series of hatted women, for one, do seem to evoke Utamaro's portraits of hatted beauties. Francesca Castellani for instance, considers Renoir's 'The Frilled Hat' or 'The Pinned Hat' series (i.e. Le Chapeau Épinglé) have an essential quality akin to ukiyo-e, that is associated with Utamaro, for as “in Japanese prints, these girls are immersed in a fluid and velvety atmosphere that transfigures their physical reality and the fortuitousness of this occasion.“ (Castellani, Renoir: His Life and Works, 1996, English version 1998: 192)
To provide some idea of the ukiyo-e genre of women in hats and headgear, below is Kitagawa Utamaro’s ‘The Heron Maiden’ (Sagi musume) from the series An Array of Dancing Girls of the Present Day (Tosei odoriko zoroe, 1793–94, Tokyo National Museum), and besides it Renoir’s pastel, ‘Woman in a Flowered Hat’, (1916-1918). The whereabouts of this Renoir pastel are unknown according to Elizabeth Elias Kaufman, in her Renoir (1980, Castle Books, image below archive.org); it was featured earlier in Jacques Chambaudet’s Renoir: Vision et Technique (Éditions Pétridès, 1947), a limited edition of lithographs of Renoir’s work, and there the image is much lighter and closer to Utamaro. In any case, their joint example indicates further investigation between Renoir and Utamaro (and other ukiyo-e artists) is merited. The cropped, close-up composition, the viewing angle, the relation of the hat to face, all this of course is immediately noticeable, but also of interest is the rendering of the tightly covered neck and facial disposition, including details such as the ‘pointy’ ear of Renoir’s woman, which seems to reflect the pointed shape of the Heron Maiden’s ear. The corresponding olive color is applied differently, as often seems to be the case in Renoir when Japanese influence is to be suspected, and is a phenomenon that can be seen in other artist works of japonisme.
Moving beyond portraiture, Renoir’s paintings done with Monet at La Grenouillère stand out as being thematically and compositionally analogous to the boat-outing genre of ukiyo-e. Often in these ukiyo-e pictures, multiple boats, with their fore or aft converging, are boarded by crowds of mainly fashionable women. Renoir’s ‘La Grenouillère’ (1869, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm) and Monet’s ‘La Grenouillère’ (1869, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC), painted together in high spirits of comaraderie, share much in common artistically, including Japanese compositional techniques depicting boating and water scenes with cut-off stern/prows, and in general pronounced cropping. The hanging vines in Renoir’s version are particularly reminiscent of Hiroshige’s ‘Wistaria at Kameido Tenjin Shrine’ (Kameido Tenjin keidai, 1856, variations exist of the translated title), from his series ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’, with a view of the water through hanging wisteria.
Jacques Dufwa, in his Winds from the East: A Study in the Art of Manet, Degas, Monet, and Whistler 1856-86 (Stockholm Studies in the History of Art 34, 1981) speaking of Monet’s version, but also including a discussion of Renoir, sees a marked shift, in a fundamental sense, of engaging in a true ‘at the moment’ conveyance of perceptual sensations, and a freer use of color, light, and contrast---inspired by Japanese artistic imagery:
“…Monet, precisely in his Impressionism, was to express something quite genuinely Japanese, and some of the works analysed here have already given us an idea of this. In September 1869, together with Renoir, he took an important step towards a new style when the two friends were painting at La Grenouillère near Bougival, west of Paris. Here, both of the painters allowed themselves to be completely absorbed by the impressions of the moment upon their senses. The play of the light in the water and the diversity of life among the faded demimonde which frequented the place---later to be delineated by Maupassant with an extreme realism---are suggested at a distance from the subject but with a vivid realization of the form. Even if Monet in his three directly painted studies merely saw a preparation for a larger work (which however was never completed), it is obvious that the interest of Monet and Renoir was not so much in pictorial representation as in the picture’s structure and its wealth of tones when they painted La Grenouillère in that September light. While Renoir on his canvas saw the theme in a veiled lyricism, Monet went to work on it by more immediate and uncomplicated means.
Like the Japanese, Monet avoided giving volume by shading; the brush strokes are broad, the contrasts in colour striking. As in Japanese prints, there is a display of exciting and colourful detail against subdued colours and black---light against darkness, both in the depiction of the figures and in the water’s reflection of sun and shadow. In the water, light and colour make a glittering dance: movement and transformation in contrast to mass and volume.” (Dufwa, 1981: 135-136)
But if this is true for Monet, it must be to a good extent for Renoir as well, at least in this particular case. For Renoir probably comes closest to Monet in these paintings at La Grenouillère, and many of the points raised above about Monet’s painting are also characteristic of Renoir’s, despite the differences that must exist between two adamantly unique artistic personalities. There they were, painting for perhaps two months, at times side by side outdoors, and it would hardly seem reasonable to say that the spirit of Monet, reaching for a more free and spontaneous expression, sparked in no small part by the example of Japan, did not overflow and affect Renoir to some extent. Japanese art, as a fundamental force in shaping the goals and practice of Impressionism for Monet, must be said to have had an effect on Renoir’s plein-air and chromatic sensibilities, even if primarily in a form of indirect transmission.
Certainly a variety of striking parallels with classic ukiyo-e imagery can be found in Renoir’s composition of several other outdoor scenes, despite at times his pronounced use of shadow, sunlight, and reflection, which convey a very different first impression from that of woodblock prints. His ‘Musselfishers at Berneval’ (1880, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA), for instance, with its woman with a woven basket on her back overlooking her shoulder at children, is so very reminiscent of ukiyo-e images of common folk women and children at the shore, such as the ‘shiohi-gari’ or ‘receded tide clam-gathering’ genre of ukiyo-e, which a good number of artists from Hokusai to Chikanobu tried their hand at.
An illuminating example is Renoir’s ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party' (1881, Phillips Collection), shown below. Now turn to Kubo Shunman’s diptych ‘Party in Shikian restaurant on Nakazu island overlooking Sumida River’ (1787-1788, British Museum, alternative title: ‘Two Young Men and Several Women Dining at a Tea-house on the Bank of the Sumida River’, MET), noting the setting, composition, placement and poses and mood of the participants, the atmosphere exuding a sense of being comfortably at ease.
Renoir’s image is almost a reflection of that from the other side of the world; two parallel events, only that the cultural parameters have been changed. Substitute wine bottles for sake and add a table to the scene at the Shikian in Japan, or take away the table and substitute sake for wine at the Boating Party in France---and truly, these two images become essentially one. Beyond the obvious correspondences of, for instance, one man standing leaning against the railing to the left, somewhat aloof; and the other younger fellow inside to the right sitting with the women; with the waiter vs. waitress standing on the right side; or the red striped awning vs. boarded awning with red hanging lanterns, both cutting across obliquely along the top; or the very tiny boats in the distance; or perhaps even the similar yellow outlined with dark lines in the Party at Shikian and highlighted with dark lines in the hats of the Boating Party;---we will leave it to the reader to discover further similarities between these two pictures.
As for his famous 'The Umbrellas' (c. 1881-1886, National Gallery, London), the compositional and cropping techniques are very much those of ukiyo-e artists. An example by Utamaro is provided below, from his Ehon shiki no hana (1801, Picture Book on Flowers of the Four Seasons, MET)---widely collected in Europe and America, and still found in major museums on both continents. Utamaro's picture of a tightly packed crowd with angled parasols, with pronounced cropping, is but one enlightening example of how clear precedents exist in Japanese art for many of Renoir’s compositions. Sophie Monneret was one of the few who did mention the possibility of Japanese influence on ‘The Umbrellas’, though in the vaguest terms, stating: "Some have seen a reference to an engraving by Manet here, as well as the influence of Japanese art." (Renoir, 1990: 98) Much more deserves to be said, and furthermore, that certain engraving by Manet may very well have been inspired by the same sort of Japanese sources.
These intriguing reflections of ukiyo-e imagery are not limited to social settings or the human form. The same can be said of his landscapes. His ‘Cliffs at Berneval’ or otherwise ‘at Pourville’ (1879, private collection) and ‘Rocks at L’Estaque’ (1882, private collection) are two such examples (among several others), of compositions strongly reminiscent of Hiroshige and Hokusai landscape conceptions, something which applies to Cezanne as well, who Renoir met when painting the latter, though that connection (between Cezanne and ukiyo-e landscapes, e.g. Tanaka Hidemichi, ‘Cezanne and “Japonisme” Artibus et Historiae Vol. 22 No. 44, 2001), has been generally overlooked as well.
Below is Renoir’s ‘Rocks at L’Estaque’ next to Utagawa Hiroshige’s ‘Autumn Full Moon at Ishiyama’ (Ishiyama shugetsu), from the series ‘Eight Views of Omi Province’ (Omi hakkei), 1835-1845, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Object no. JP2847). The similarities go beyond general composition and massing techniques, to the specifics of rock shape and crevice, interspersing of vegetation, the positioning of areas of open space, and the like.
Perhaps these examples are at least sufficient for the reader to realize the need to discuss Renoir’s works in the wider context of Japanese precedents, given the widespread and enthusiastic reception of Japanese art at the time, and that not to do so, in the case of 'The Umbrellas', for instance, in reference to the ukiyo-e parasol genre, might be judged scholarly negligence---that would never be allowed to pass were the tables turned, that is if we were discussing a Japanese painting with conspicuous European precedents. The charge of a widespread ‘Marginalization of Japonisme in Western Art History’ (Greg M. Thomas, in Japan and Japonisme, 2025: 83-102) seems not unfounded.
Maurice Sérullaz, mentioned earlier (one of the leading authorities on 19th century French art and first curator of the Musée National Eugène-Delacroix, later Chief Curator of the Louvre Department of Prints and Drawings, as well as professor at the École du Louvre, author of the Phaidon Encyclopedia of Impressionism), in his The Concise Encyclopedia of Impressionism (translated by E.M.A. Graham, Omega Books, 1974), includes Renoir among the seven artists strongly influenced by Japanese art that he specifies by name:
“Finally there was one last and very marked influence on the young painters of the time, and that was Japan and everything Japanese. … French artists got to know Japanese prints, and the great Japanese engravers such as Utamaro (1755-1806), Hokusai (1760-1849) and Hiroshige (1797-1858). To Western eyes, the general appearance of these prints with oblique off-centre effects, simplified forms and presentation, as well as their delicate colouring, were unusual and fascinating, and many artists, among them Manet, Monet, Renoir, van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and especially Degas, as well as the Symbolists and the 'Nabis', were influenced by Japanese art.” (Sérullaz, 1974: 12, bold added)
We must not overlook Sérullaz's comment that such influence emanated from "everything Japanese". For while he brings up ukiyo-e artists, there is a reason for his emphatic emphasis on Japan’s influence as a cultural entity in all its manifestations; and Renoir is probably a good instance of Japan as both idea and example. As documented in Herbert’s study of Renoir’s personal writings, the artist absorbed the lessons of multiple Japanese art media from ceramics to sculpture to ukiyo-e, and it was the ‘everything’ that was more important to Renoir, in contrast to the well-known focus upon woodblock prints of a Monet or Manet.
It is not that simply a wider range of Japanese arts and crafts and their outwardly forms and colors were assimilated into Renoir's work. Oshima Seiji, in his chapter on Renoir (Japonisme, 1992: 195-198) argues that it is at a fundamental level of conceptualizing art and nature, and of identity and conceptions of the self and the other, that Renoir, more keen on philosophical issues than he is usually credited for, mirrors in his ideas much of what was defined as ‘Japanese’ and how it contrasted with Western/French civilization as put forth by French authors such as the art critic Ernest Chesneau (1833–1890). Oshima finds strong parallels between Renoir’s beliefs and those contained in documents regarding Japan such as Chesneau’s speech for a federation of applied industrial arts, but also earlier in his views on Japanese art at the Paris World Exposition of 1867, and in his later tract, Le Japon à Paris (1878). Here too, the emphasis was not on ukiyo-e vs. Western painting, but rather a polemic for European crafts and decorative arts as a whole based on the instructional example of Japan as a cultural entity.
Idealized or stereotyped as it may have been, ‘Japan’ was nevertheless the revelation of a truer sense of balance beyond what symmetry offered, through asymmetry and irregularity or in Japanese ‘fukinsei’ (不均整); the attainment of a more intrinsic congruence of form and purpose, form and materials; exemplifying colors grounded in the native geography and climate; and demonstrating a oneness and directness of perception and action regarding nature, art and reality---in short, ideas contained in the core concept of ‘Wa’ (和)—Harmony.
In fact there are parallels between Renoir’s beliefs and the ideas of a variety of Japan enthusiasts of the age, such as Philippe Burty, who coined the term ‘Japonisme’, and the British artist Edward Burne-Jones, who, though depicting medieval scenes, was much inspired by the example of Japanese art. Herbert, in his thorough examination of Renoir’s writings, found the following theme underlying much of it:
“Medieval Europe and other societies vaguely called “barbarian” had a wholeness, Renoir thought, that could not be found in his own day in France. For a contemporary society that could be admired, he named only Japan. Like his client and friendly critic Theodore Duret, and like van Gogh, he believed that Japanese craftsmen, matching those of earlier Europe, were integrated into their society. They were not tainted by modern cities, and instead enjoyed “this simple existence that allows them time to go out, to contemplate.” In France the simple life that Renoir envisioned for Japanese artists had been destroyed, he believed, by the secular materialism of the nineteenth century.” (Nature’s Workshop, 2000: 15)
These overarching notions were close to his heart—ideas of French vs. Japanese culture, past vs. present, nature vs. art—where every Japanese art and craft provided examples of methodology, perception, and thought processes, not necessarily specific forms to imitate, though, as we have come across repeatedly, he seems to have borrowed directly from Japanese sources as well. But even so, most importantly, it is at the level of his underlying premises and defining conceptions where a connection between Renoir and Japan existed, shaping his outlook on art, nature, and his own sense of cultural identity.
Let us look at those conceptual links in greater depth. Throughout the section ‘From Auguste Renoir’s Notebook’ in Renoir, My Father by his son Jean, are ideas that are most often associated with the basic precepts of japonisme influence---such as asymmetry, which Renoir calls irregularity, and which is perhaps a more apt description of Japanese art, since it was not really asymmetry as opposed to symmetry that was to be found in Japanese images but the more vivid conveyance of the irregularities of nature and spatial reality. A leaf that was part eaten by insects or part shriveled and part fresh, sprouting in unpredictable directions---this was more than just the difference between symmetry and asymmetry. Or women heavy or thin who are squatting or cutting their nails in the most awkward positions in compositions that center or ‘de-centers’ them---in fact either is fine, and asymmetry itself is not necessarily categorically superior even in Japanese art. Renoir understood and assimilated this, writing in his notebook:
“Everything that I call grammar or primary notions of Art can be summed up in one word: Irregularity. … Take the leaf of a tree: take a hundred thousand other leaves of the same kind of tree: not one will exactly resemble another. ... Explain the irregularity in regularity. The value of regularity is in the eye only … the non-value to the regularity of the compass." (J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, English edition, Little, Brown, 1962: 240-241)
Renoir spoke and wrote of this idea many times, and it often concluded with the example of Japan, as he does in his manuscript on the principles of art, Grammar:
“When you go for a walk in the country you see that the trees, even though planted together, don’t have the same shape or the same thickness. Pull all the leaves off a tree and lay them on top of one another, you’ll see that, were there millions of them, you wouldn’t find a single one with exactly the same shape or the same color. You enjoy this [painted] avenue: but change it, add some regularized trees, with leaves modeled after one another, you’ll sense the wearisomeness of the monotony and you’ll quickly take refuge in the arms of nature. You’ll be content with the infinite riches she gives you, without wanting to correct her. That’s why Japanese cups are pretty and ours ugly.” (Herbert, Nature’s Workshop, 2000: 136, italics added)
And perhaps the countless ukiyo-e bijin (‘beauties’) which conveyed an image so contrary to the Greek ideal in almost every respect of racial and cultural composition--whether facial type and expression, anatomical make up, pose or poise, clothing and color---made it all very clear for Renoir: "It is customary to prostrate oneself in front of the (obvious) beauty of Greek art. The rest has no value. What a farce! It is as if you told me that a blonde is more beautiful than a brunette; and vice versa.” (J. Renoir, Renoir, My Father, 1962: 241) Might it not be Renoir then, who better grasped the lesson of Japanese art and plumbed its depths, more so than many of his contemporaries, well-known as japonistes?
Elsewhere he is more explicit about Japan. In his notebook he declares that "Young people should learn to see things for themselves, and not ask for advice", and that they should instead:
"Look at the way the Japanese painted birds and fish. Their system is quite simple. They sat down in the countryside and watched birds flying. By watching them carefully, they finally came to understand movement; and they did the same as regards fish." (J. Renoir, 1962: 243)
So what is the footing and foundation of an artist? "An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature." Tools are not important. Rather, it is observation of Nature ‘as is’, which he explains by the following:
"The Japanese still have a simplicity of life which gives them time to go about and to contemplate. They still look, fascinated, at a blade of grass, or the flight of birds, or the wonderful movements of fish, and they go home, their minds filled with beautiful ideas, which they have no trouble in putting on the objects they decorate." (Ibid)
The existence of the plastic arts, including ceramics, loomed large in his imagination, and the lessons of Japan were never far from those conceptions. Renoir wrote:
“Everyone has written about ceramics, architecture, art in general. It has been stated that such and such a thing was beautiful, that this other thing was less so, but no one I think has given the real reason that makes for beauty or ugliness. We're going to try to identify this thing together. Let's consider a few Japanese cups with the same design and some French cups with the same design as well. The Japanese cups will be beautiful and ours inferior, and I say that without even seeing them. (I'm speaking naturally about modern ones.) It's because Japanese cups are made with hand and eye and perceptiveness whereas French ones are made merely by a clever worker who has nothing except his skill, more harmful than useful in this case.” (paragraph 25, Grammar, in Herbert, 2000: 127)
Renoir proceeds to explain in much detail:
“Let's consider how the Japanese artist must proceed at first. He wants to make a simple sowing of flowerets. He has seen these flowers, saturated himself with them, seen them according to his temperament and wants to render them as such. He prepares his palette and sketches lightly, without using a compass certainly, and scatters these flowers on this cup, arranges them to his taste and pleased with the effect produced, gets ready to make a second one. But whether the flowers as conceived were too small or crowded too closely together, he feels obliged to add one or two more. The third, and so on. It happens occasionally that an open space a bit too big in his initial plan forces him to add a little leaf or a twig that isn't found on the other cups. Such work activates the mind and, after a few years of work, you see yourself what this man can produce. Because you know that he never agrees to redoing identically the same things.” (paragraph 26, Grammar, in Herbert 2000: 127)
Japan was unique in that sense; nor was Renoir talking about the ‘Orient’ or ‘Asia’, not even China, but specifically Japan. His is not to be confused with an ‘Orientalism’ or ‘Chinoiserie’. For Renoir, during the peak of his powers, Japan it seems, stood even above that ultimate training ground for all serious artists until the end of the 19th century---Italy. For instance, while some art historians have assumed Renoir became acquainted with the medieval painter Cennino Cennini’s treatise on art, Il Libro dell’Arte from the early 1880s (this again based on Vollard, whose dates for Renoir’s supposed acquisition of the book seem unlikely. Herbert, 2000: 42 footnote), which he was to write a preface for in 1910, Herbert documents that, “his [Renoir’s] manuscripts of 1882-84 do not have the slightest hint of Cennini and it was Japan, not Italy, that he compared with France.” (Herbert, 2000: 42) Renoir describes this artistic exceptionalism in the following passage in his Grammar:
“The Japanese for the time being, or up until now, are the only people to have remained within the sound tradition provided by nature. I don’t know this artistic people well enough to tell you the true reason for this. What’s certain is that they’re the only people to take the time to find pleasure from their eyes. They still have the simplicity of the great races. They go and see how birds fly, how fish swim, and have even captured the foam that the sea makes atop its waves, in order to fix them in bronze, on porcelain, and add them even to their unmatched embroidery.” (paragraph 156, Grammar, in Herbert, 2000: 152)
It should be apparent from even these limited examples how much Renoir looked to Japan as embodying artistic ideals and the artist’s proper approach to art. And furthermore, for Renoir, that Japanese decorative art sensibilities, which we have called ‘kogei aesthetics’---where distinctions between arts and crafts are transcended, where the decorative and poetic become one---were an enduring source of inspiration. We postulated two streams of influence there, one represented by the aesthetic qualities of crafts such as ceramics and textiles, and the other by fans and parasols; these united to form one tributary, which in turn united with that of more purely graphic arts such as ukiyo-e. Parallel to this tangible stimulus, was the equally wide, intangible flow of ideas discussed above, covering art, nature, reality, identity, and artistic perception---all this would have coalesced into a forceful imaginative undercurrent shaping Renoir’s creations. If so, it may be said that Renoir was indeed very much immersed in japonisme, in the sense Philippe Burty defined it:
“as the study of the art and genius of Japan.”
As a final observation, it appears that the idea of Japanese influence upon Renoir was more easily accepted in the 1970’s, in-line with what we might call a more open-minded view of art history, and for that matter, history in general at the time. That was so in France and Germany, but also in English speaking countries as Britain and America. But as time went on, especially from the late 1980’s onward, the more widely promoted art history surveys and their revised editions, such as those by Gombrich, Janson, Gardner, or Rewald, have tended to underplay japonisme, despite the growing body of evidence for it---and the connection with specific artists such as Renoir.
Works Cited
Art Institute of Chicago. Renoir Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, ‘Cat. 15. Chrysanthemums, 1881/82’. Online at https://publications.artic.edu/renoir/api/epub/135446/135643/print_view.
Bailey, Colin B., et al. Renoir Landscapes: 1865-1883. National Gallery, 2007.
Bell, Esther, and George T. M. Shackelford, editors. Renoir: The Body, the Senses. Clark Art Institute / Yale University Press, 2019.
Castellani, Francesca. Renoir: His Life and Works. Arnoldo Mondadori 1996, English 1998.
Dallas Museum of Art. Museum website, Collections, Object Details of Renoir’s ‘Roses and Peonies in a Vase’ at https://dma.org/art/collection/object/5336041.
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Fosca, François. Renoir. Translated by M. Martin, Harry N. Abrams, 1969.
Harvard Art Museums. Gallery text for ‘Spring Bouquet’ (1866). Online at https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/303729.
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Renoir, Jean. Renoir, My Father. Translated by R. and D. Weaver, Little, Brown and Co., 1962.
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Russell, John. “On Art: ‘Japonisme’ Stirring Cleveland”. The New York Times, August 23, 1975, p. 19.
Schneider, Bruno F. Renoir. Crown Books, 1958.
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Other in Representations of Japanese Culture. Edited by Noriko Murai, Routledge, 2025: 83-102.
Vollard, Ambroise. Renoir: An Intimate Record. Translated by H. L. Van Doren and R. T. Weaver, Alfred A. Knopf, 1925, Dover reprint, 1990.
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