Japonisme: How the Great Wave Changed European Painting and Why Prussian Blue Made the Full Circle from Berlin

Last updated: May 2026 · By Stanislav Arnautov · Berlin

Japonisme — the term coined by the French critic Philippe Burty in 1872 — describes the profound influence of Japanese visual culture on European painting, graphic design, and applied arts from approximately 1856 (when Japan opened to Western trade following Commodore Perry's 1853 arrival) to approximately 1920. The influence was not superficial imitation but fundamental compositional and chromatic transformation: the European avant-garde absorbed from Japanese printmaking a set of visual principles — flat colour without modelling, high horizon lines, asymmetric composition, the silhouette as primary visual unit, the expressive potential of the outline — that changed the course of Western art permanently. DeckArts Berlin reproduces Hokusai's Great Wave on Canadian maple from approximately $140.

How Japan Opened: 1853 and the Flood of Prints into Europe

Japan had maintained the sakoku (national isolation) policy from 1635 to 1853, restricting international trade to the Dutch trading post at Dejima in Nagasaki. When Commodore Matthew Perry's US Navy squadron arrived in Edo Bay in July 1853 and demanded trading rights under threat of force, the Japanese government capitulated — the Convention of Kanagawa (March 1854) opened Japanese ports to American ships, and subsequent treaties opened them to European powers. By 1858, Japan was open to full international trade.

Japanese goods — ceramics, lacquerware, silk textiles, folding screens, and, crucially, woodblock prints — flooded into European markets from the late 1850s onward. The woodblock prints, which had been produced in enormous quantities for the Japanese domestic market, were cheap, numerous, and completely unlike anything European artists had seen. The specific visual properties of ukiyo-e prints — flat colour areas without shadow modelling, bold outlines, asymmetric compositions, the high horizon line, the absence of vanishing-point perspective — were the complete opposite of the academic European tradition and immediately recognisable to European painters as a different set of solutions to the same problems.

Van Gogh's Japanese Prints: 400 Works, 3 Direct Copies

Vincent van Gogh collected approximately 400 Japanese woodblock prints (now at the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam) and studied them intensively during his Paris period (1886-88). In 1887, he made three direct oil copies of Hiroshige prints as compositional exercises: Sudden Shower over Shin-Ohashi Bridge (after Hiroshige, Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam), Plum Park in Kameido (after Hiroshige, Van Gogh Museum), and a third copy. These oil copies are unique in Van Gogh's oeuvre: he copied other artists' work regularly as an exercise, but the Hiroshige copies are the only instances where he adopted not just the composition but the specific flat-colour, high-outline graphic method of the source rather than translating it into his own brushwork style.

The Japonisme influence on Van Gogh's mature style is not limited to the explicit copies. The compositional choices of the Arles and Saint-Rémy periods — the upward-looking viewpoint of Almond Blossom, the flat sky zone of the same work, the silhouette approach to the Cypress series, and the rhythmic, repetitive brushwork that Van Gogh specifically described as learning from Hokusai's line treatment in a letter to Émile Bernard (1888) — all reflect the sustained absorption of ukiyo-e principles into his visual practice.

Monet at Giverny: The Japanese Garden and Water Lilies

Claude Monet (Paris, 1840-1926) purchased a property at Giverny in 1883 and spent the remaining 43 years of his life there, transforming the garden into a total Japanese-inspired landscape programme: the Japanese bridge, the water garden, the weeping willows, the water lilies. Monet collected approximately 200 Japanese woodblock prints, which are still displayed in his Giverny house (now open to the public as the Fondation Claude Monet). The prints — Hiroshige, Hokusai, Utamaro, and others — are displayed in multiple rooms and represent one of the most significant 19th-century European collections of ukiyo-e.

The Nymphéas (Water Lilies) series — the approximately 250 paintings of the Giverny water garden that Monet produced between 1896 and 1926, culminating in the large-format panoramic installations now at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris — is the most sustained Western realisation of Japanese garden aesthetics in painting. The flat surface of the water, the absence of a horizon line, the reflections of sky in water, and the fragmentary cropping of lily pads and willow branches at the composition's edges are all ukiyo-e compositional principles applied to Western oil painting at the largest possible scale.

Toulouse-Lautrec and the Flat-Colour Poster: Ukiyo-e Goes Urban

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Albi, 1864 – Saint-André-du-Bois, 1901) applied ukiyo-e's flat-colour graphic principles to commercial poster design — the Moulin Rouge and Aristide Bruant posters of the early 1890s are among the most direct formal applications of Japanese printmaking to Western graphic art. The specific ukiyo-e elements in Toulouse-Lautrec's poster work: flat colour areas without gradient or modelling; bold black outline as the primary graphic element; the high horizon line and asymmetric composition derived from Hokusai and Hiroshige; and the reduction of the figure to a graphic silhouette rather than a three-dimensional modelled form. Toulouse-Lautrec owned Japanese prints and was documented as a regular visitor to the Paris shops that sold them from the 1880s.

Degas and the High Horizon: Japanese Spatial Composition

Edgar Degas (Paris, 1834-1917) collected approximately 150 Japanese prints and applied the specific spatial compositional strategies of ukiyo-e — particularly the high horizon line, the asymmetric placement of the main figure, and the cropping of figures at the composition's edge as if by a camera rather than by compositional convention — to his Impressionist figure painting. The ballet series, the bath series, and the racetrack paintings all use the high-horizon, asymmetric, figure-cropped spatial structure that Degas derived from Japanese print composition.

Degas also adopted the ukiyo-e practice of depicting the body in motion rather than in posed stasis: the Japanese masters depicted kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, and dancers in arrested movement rather than in the formal portrait poses of the Western tradition. Degas's ballerinas and bathers are caught in the same momentary, private, unposed quality that ukiyo-e figures have — observed rather than posed, arrested rather than presented.

Full Circle: Prussian Blue from Berlin to Japan to Europe

The Japonisme story contains a remarkable chromatic full circle: the pigment that made the most celebrated Japanese prints — Hokusai's Great Wave, Hiroshige's landscapes, the "blue period" of ukiyo-e — was Prussian blue, invented in Berlin in 1704 by Johann Jacob Diesbach, carried to Japan via Dutch trade around 1820, used by Japanese printmakers for the most distinctive and most exported Japanese prints, which then flooded into Europe from 1856 and influenced the European avant-garde. The European Impressionists and Post-Impressionists who were transformed by Japanese prints were being influenced by works made with a German pigment that had left Europe, been adopted by Japan, and returned to Europe embedded in a Japanese visual tradition. Prussian blue — born in Berlin, matured in Japan, influential in Paris.

DeckArts produces Hokusai's Great Wave in Berlin — the city where Prussian blue was invented 322 years ago, and where it is now reproduced in UV archival pigment inks on Canadian maple for contemporary domestic walls. The geographic and chromatic circle is complete.

DeckArts

Hokusai — Great Wave Diptych (~$230)

Prussian blue: Berlin 1704 → Japan 1820 → Great Wave 1831 → Japonisme in Paris 1856-1920 → DeckArts Berlin 2026. The full circle. From ~$230 on Canadian maple.

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FAQ

What is Japonisme in art?

Japonisme is the term (coined by French critic Philippe Burty, 1872) for the influence of Japanese visual culture on European art from approximately 1856 to 1920. Japanese woodblock prints flooded into European markets after Japan opened to trade in 1853-58, introducing European painters to flat-colour composition without shadow modelling, high horizon lines, asymmetric composition, and the silhouette as primary visual unit. Van Gogh, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and Whistler were all directly and substantially influenced. DeckArts from ~$140.

How did Japanese art influence Van Gogh?

Van Gogh collected ~400 Japanese prints (now at Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam), copied three Hiroshige prints directly in oil (1887), and wrote to Émile Bernard (1888) specifically about studying Hokusai's line treatment. The Japonisme influence in his mature work: upward-looking composition of Almond Blossom, flat sky zone, silhouette approach to cypresses, rhythmic repetitive brushwork. The almond blossom subject itself (cherry/plum blossom upward-looking against sky) is directly from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo blossom prints.

Summary

Japonisme (Philippe Burty, 1872): Japanese visual influence on European art 1856-1920 following Japan's opening (Convention of Kanagawa March 1854, Perry's 1853 arrival). Key principles absorbed: flat colour without modelling, high horizon line, asymmetric composition, silhouette as primary unit, bold outline, cropped figures. Van Gogh: ~400 prints collected, 3 direct Hiroshige oil copies (1887, Van Gogh Museum), Hokusai line study (Letter to Bernard 1888). Monet: ~200 prints collected, Giverny Japanese garden, Nymphéas series (~250 works, 1896-1926, Orangerie Paris). Toulouse-Lautrec: flat-colour poster (Moulin Rouge 1891) = ukiyo-e principles in commercial graphic design. Degas: ~150 prints, high horizon, asymmetric cropping, body in unposed motion. Full circle: Prussian blue (Berlin 1704) → Japan (~1820) → Great Wave (1831) → Japonisme Paris (1856-1920) → DeckArts Berlin (2026). DeckArts Great Wave from ~$140 single / ~$230 diptych. Canadian maple. UV archival 100+ years. 30-day return.

About the Author

Stanislav Arnautov is the founder of DeckArts and a creative director from Ukraine based in Berlin.