Existing comment:
West Meets East
Japan's opening up to the West in the early 1850s brought an influx of Japanese art and curiosities to Paris. One of the most outspoken proponents of japonisme, the resulting vogue for the Japanese style in art, was Philippe Burty. A contributor to Paris à l'eau-forte, Burty collaborated with Louis Gonse on the new publication L'Art japonais, which Guérard helped illustrate with more than 200 prints of Japanese subjects.
Particularly formative for Guérard's own approach to japonisme were the printed works of Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), known as Hokusai manga. The multivolume series pictured an encyclopedic array of animals, people, and objects, which are ordered by theme and sometimes arranged in compositions and situations that create simple narrative structures. Hokusai presented his figures afloat on the white page with little information about setting or place. His informal, sketchlike approach profoundly shaped Guérard's own treatment of Japanese-inspired subjects. |