Robert Draws – Van Gogh and the Japanese influence is a fascinating story of how a renowned Western artist was profoundly impacted by the art and aesthetics of a far-off Eastern culture. In February 1888, Vincent van Gogh left Paris, where he had spent several years, and traveled south to the town of Arles in Provence, France. Exhausted by the bustling city life and hoping to find peace, he sought a simpler life that he hoped would improve both his well-being and his art. He was also eager to form a community of artists and was keen on exploring new artistic possibilities.
Surprisingly, in his excitement, he began to view his new surroundings through the lens of a distant land: Japan.
In a letter to his fellow artist Paul Gauguin, who would later join him in Arles, Van Gogh recalled looking out the window during his train journey from Paris to Provence, wondering “if it was like Japan yet!” He admitted to being slightly childlike in his enthusiasm. Upon his arrival, he found that heavy snowfall had transformed the countryside, but the bright white rice fields reminded him of the “winter landscapes” depicted by Japanese artists.
As the months passed, Van Gogh continued to associate Provence with Japan. In September 1888, he wrote to his sister that he “always told himself that [he was] in Japan here.” His love for the region deepened, and he continued to draw inspiration from Japanese aesthetics. “The weather is still good here,” he wrote to his brother, “and if it were always like this, it would be better than a painter’s paradise, it would be entirely Japan.”
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According to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., it was the brilliant sunlight in Provence that Van Gogh had been searching for, a light that would illuminate detail and simplify forms, reducing the surrounding world into patterns similar to those seen in Japanese woodblock prints. Van Gogh described Arles as “Southern Japan,” feeling that the horizontal light would strengthen the composition’s lines, reducing color tones to stark contrasts.
Reading Van Gogh’s letters reveals that Japan held a mystical, almost magical significance for him. In his imagination, the Land of the Rising Sun was a spring of grace and well-being, a utopia of blessings.
Van Gogh was not alone in his obsession with Japan during the 19th century. In the 1850s, after more than two centuries of isolation, Japan opened up to international trade, and a significant number of Japanese goods were imported into France. This led to a genuine craze for all things Japanese. A style of interior decoration inspired by Japan took hold among the bourgeoisie, and stores began selling porcelain, lacquerware, parasols, screens, fans, lanterns, and various other Japanese art objects.
Meanwhile, artists, including Claude Monet and James McNeill Whistler, became captivated by Japanese woodblock prints. By 1872, the French term “Japonisme” had been coined to describe the influence of Japanese art and design on Western culture, particularly visual arts.
Van Gogh’s exposure to Japanese art came somewhat later. He first became familiar with its beauty while living in Antwerp in 1885. Where he adorned his studio walls with a set of black-and-white prints. But it was in Paris, the center of modernity, where his fascination with Japan truly blossomed. During the winter of 1886-1887, Van Gogh purchased hundreds of inexpensive Japanese prints from a dealer’s attic, ultimately amassing a collection of over 600 sheets. He was drawn to the vibrant colors and simplicity of Japanese aesthetics. Even hoping to profit by selling some of them in an exhibition at Le Tambourin café. Which was run by his lover Agostina Segatori. The exhibition, however, was a failure.
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In Arles, Van Gogh continued to display Japanese prints on his studio walls. But the influence became more profound and less literal. Japan, in his mind, was an idealized land. A world of natural beauty, colorful women in kimonos, birds, and flowers, all rendered in bold, expressive colors. For Van Gogh, Japanese prints represented pure artistic expression, untouched by Western modes of representation.
Rather than simply copying Japanese prints, Van Gogh began experimenting with aspects of them in his own work. He utilized their bright, flat colors, strong diagonal lines, close-up perspectives, bird’s eye views, unusual cropping, and the isolation of prominent objects such as large tree branches in the foreground.
