Japonisme

During the postwar era in which most of us grew up (or can well remember), the words "Made in Japan" were synonymous with cheap trinkets, plastic jewelry, and Christmas toys that broke before New Year's Eve. Then came Sony, Yashika, Minolta, Honda, Toyota, and Panasonic. They were neither cheap nor trinkets. In the realm of art, Japanese imports have been around for well over a century. Their distinctive style and Eastern aesthetics made them a fascinating, and highly collectible form of art in this country dating back to the 1840s and 50s. And like today, they were neither cheap nor trinkets. The mark of an erudite millionaire art connoisseur was the quality of his Japonisme. The French fell in love with it first, then the English, and finally the Americans, though up until the Civil War, Japanese objets d' art were neither well known nor fashionable. However, after the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, where the Japanese exhibits were immensely popular, the trend caught on.

The Japanese Room, Christian Herter,
William H. Vanderbilt Mansion, New York

The New York decorating firm of Herter Brothers was a leading importer. William H. Vanderbilt had an entire room in his New York City mansion decorated in a Japanese style in which he displayed his hundreds of Japanese art objects. Of course the room no longer exists, nor in fact, does the mansion, but photographs from the period depict an expensive clutter of sculpture, furniture, bamboo, vases, silk paintings, and heavy drapery exemplifying as much Victorian tastes in decorating as it does a love of things Japanese. Often wealthy American millionaires such as William Sturgis Bigelow, a Boston Physician, would go all the way to Japan on scavenger hunts that sometimes lasted several years, immersing themselves in the art and culture of this enigmatic civilization as they poured millions of yen into their collections. Bigelow was followed by artists such as John La Farge and the writer-decorator Samuel Bing, who collected Japanese literary works and wrote essays on Japanese which, in 1891, he published in a three-volume set--probably a rather limited edition given it's time and content.

The Peacock Room, 1876-77,
James McNeill Whistler, Freer Gallery,
Washington, DC

Meanwhile, in England, the American expatriate artist, best known for painting his mother, created an entire room which today does survive, transported intact to this country, and now displayed in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Assuming the role of interior decorator, James McNeill Whistler created what has since come to be known as The Peacock Room for the London home of Frederick Richards Leyland. Unlike the Victorian clutter of Herter's Japanese Room in the Vanderbilt mansion, Whistler's effort is truly a work of art. Like so many of his paintings, the actual title, Harmony in Blue and Gold, reflected Whistler's interest in color as much as Japonisme. The walls are lined in leather painted a peacock blue overlaid by a gilded ribbing carved to imitate bamboo. (Why use the real thing when you can create your own expensive substitute?) There is a lavish use of gold leaf on shelves and the ceiling, even including electric light fixtures in a Japanese style (which, for its time, must have taken some imagination). The centerpiece of the room, however, was a sumptuous gold-leaf  wall "painting" by Whistler of two delicately rendered peacocks so glorious in their radiant plumage that it was adopted as the trademark motif of the then-popular Aesthetic Movement. Though not designed by Whistler, nor as aesthetically pleasant, many homes today also have Japanese rooms...usually wherever it is we listen to our stereos, play video games, or watch TV.