"Japonisme" was the term coined by the French art critic Philippe Burty in 1872 to describe the European-wide craze for all-things Japanese that occurred in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when Admiral Matthew Perry forced Japan to end their over two centuries of isolation. In the years following, huge numbers of Japanese artifacts and handcrafted items flowed into Europe, mainly to France and the Netherlands, and the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867 had a Japanese booth that displayed Japanese art objects to the amazed public.
Due to the linguistic and close geographic relationships, the fashion of Japonisme transferred from France to Belgium. All things Japanese were suddenly stylish and fashionable, and the artists of the period, such as Monet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin, were attracted to and impressed by Japanese prints, or ukiyo-e.
This scholarly work addresses the main issues regarding Japonisme in Belgian art between 1880 and 1914. It explores the way in which Japanese art entered Belgium, and how it became part of public and private collections. It goes on to describe how Japanese art dealers helped to bring the Japanese taste into interior decoration and ukiyo-e to the public.
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