Van Gogh’s Love Affair With Japan

The influence of Japanese prints on European art

Hakone (1833–34) from The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō series by Hiroshige. Woodblock print. Image source Wikimedia Commons

In the winter of 1886-87, Vincent van Gogh bought several hundred Japanese prints that he came across in the attic of an art dealer in Paris.

Japan held a magical and mystical significance for Van Gogh, despite having never visited the country. The prints he bought gave him a window onto a culture he idealised.

Japanese woodblock prints had a unique appeal for a generation of 19th European artists. Attracted by the bright colours and clear forms, vivid contrasts and asymmetrical compositions, artists like Van Gogh, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec were keen collectors of this imported art form.

For Van Gogh, the prints gave him access to a beautiful natural idyll, an exotic place filled with mountains and rivers, flowers and birds.

The name given to the style of print available in Paris at the time is ukiyo-e, which in translation approximates to “pictures of the floating world”. The term “floating” here is used in the Buddhist sense, of something fleeting or transient; the subjects were of popular forms of recreation in Japan, from Sumo wrestling to pleasure gardens, theatre, dancing, and history, and no shortage of erotica too.