The Art of Japan: Images of the floating world

Kunisada, Artist, c1810-20, Image copyright Peter Scott Gallery

A NEW and exotic world of art intrigued and excited many western artists when Japan began to open up in the latter part of the 19th century.

A fashion for all things Japanese followed the exhibition of Japanese art and artefacts at the Exposition Universelle of 1867 in Paris.

Painters snapped up woodcuts by the Japanese masters like Hokusai and Utamaro. Monet's home at Giverny is worth a visit for his collection of Japanese prints alone and they appear in the background of paintings by Manet, van Gogh and Gauguin, among others.

The influence spread into the work of the Impressionists and their successors. Some, like van Gogh, tried to transfer the use of areas of flat colour in the prints into their oil paintings. Others, like Gauguin, also relied less on perspective, pretty much unused in the east.

Whistler imitated the woodcuts' compositions, and Degas found a freedom in the unusual angles and placings of objects in or up against the frame, a contrast to the more rigid western patterns. Prints by Japanese masters, including some whose work was admired by those French painters, are on show at Lancaster University's Peter Scott Gallery.

The exhibition, Art of Japan, is drawn from the gallery's own collection and that of Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, which has one of the most comprehensive collections of Japanese prints outside London.

Lancaster University has work by Japanese artists from the 17th century onwards, including Buddhist woodcut prints, surimono prints, scroll paintings and careful studies of the natural world.

More recent prints from 1950s and 60s are also on show, along with work by Shiko Munakata (1903-1975), considered Japan's most famous 20th century artist.

Blackburn has lent landscapes, pictures of famous courtesans, portraits of actors and scenes of everyday life by masters of the Ukiyo-e school such as Hokusai (1760-1849), Hiroshige (1797-1858) and Utamaro (1753-1806). Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, literally translated as "images of the floating world," portray life in part of the capital of Edo (now Tokyo) as it was in the early 17th to late 19th century.

It's a rare chance in the north of England to see work of elegance and charm, some of it by masters who helped change the course of western art.

DENIS INCH
denis@whooshbooks.com

Art of Japan, Japanese prints and paintings from Peter Scott Gallery Trust collection, on loan from Blackburn Art Gallery. Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster University, until May 30, 11 - 4 Mon-Fri ; 11 - 9 Thur. Adm. Free