Katherine Keenum

Blog post alert: This portrait by Hanna Hirsch-Pauli of sculptor, Jenni Lagerberg tickled me by its Japonisme, the mischievous look in the subject's eye, and those sleeves! The sleeves helped me date the picture to around 1895, thanks to a well-illustrated post, Sleeve Shifts of the 1890s at Historical Sewing.com. Its author, Jennifer Rosbrugh, makes the point that fashion ideas are sometimes taken to an extreme over a short period of time and then disappear—which is what happened with puffed sleeves.

Blog post alert: Another female artist new to me! Laura Theresa Alma-Tadema was trained in London by her husband, the artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema. She had work exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. (Had I known in time, I might have had Jeanette see it!). Many of her paintings could illustrate or inspire stories. This one of her stepdaughter Laurense's tea party? Maybe not, but I think it's sweet and the touch of Japonisme fits with things I've been looking at lately.  You can see more of her work at Wikipedia Commons and read more about her marriage to a fellow artist here.

As a follow-up to my previous post on a Corset sculptor, how about a Japonisme corset ad? In an e-mail, scholar Christine Guth immediately recognized these "Three Little Maids from School" from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera, The Mikado, first performed in 1885. The Digital Commonwealth site where I found it has three other corset ads of the same period with Japonisme motifs. Which leads me to think the commercial artist I proposed as a fictional heroine might be a serious fine artist who has been influenced by Japanese art. As she struggles to find a footing in the world of galleries, she supports herself by supplying pictures to a printer who turns out calendars and advertising cards. If I decide to go with that idea, there's lots to explore!

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My earlier post on Marie Danforth Page mentioned this self-portrait. Looking at it again, I was struck by Page's slightly amused, slightly challenging gaze out of the corner of her left eye. The side glance is explained in part by the painter's need to look in a mirror over her shoulder for a three three-quarter's pose, but it set me thinking about how she might be interpreted as a character in a story. First result: three Imagist haikus (with apologies to William Carlos Williams).

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Art historian Christine Guth has alerted me to the time Lilla Cabot Perry spent in Japan, beginning in 1897. Perry, whose style was much influenced by Claude Monet's Impressionism painted as many as thirty-five pictures of Mount Fuji, but this intimate, domestic scene of a woman showing a picture book to two little girls seems to me more likely to inspire a story.

It's interesting that the child in the middle stares out as if at a camera. That might suggest an awareness of a fourth person in the room. Perry? a narrator? another character? Turn it around: what might the painting suggest about a Western artist in Japan at the turn of the 20th C?

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Okay, so not a female artist, but I couldn't resist William McGregor Paxton's portrait of a woman in a kimono contemplating a Japanese doll. (A female artist connection: the model may be his wife, painter Elizabeth Vaughan Okie.) What's useful to me in my musing on Japonisme as part of Jeanette's story is the way the picture can lead to thoughts about how a particular woman might react privately to a particular Japanese object. Is this Jeanette or one of her friends? Does the character hold a doll or teacup? What is the emotion aroused in her? in the reader? Looked at this way, there's no need worry about the Male Gaze or other scholoraly or critical criteria. As for the golden frame, well, of course, I had to include it when I took a screen shot!

Image via Sotheby's. 

One of the things I'll have to think about is whether Jeanette is more attracted to Japanese objects  per se or to the art of Western Japonists, e.g., Henri Somm—or Mary Cassatt. Certainly, one of Jeanette's friends can be caught up in the craze for netsukes and small decorative objects. They all love fans and parasols. Amy can add Japanese blue-and-white to her teacup collection. Meanwhile, I love this image for reflecting my process of musing. See also Somm's Fantaisies Japonaises of 1879

Really, I have nothing to say about this print except, Wow! Look!
Image via Harvard Musuems

Back to a possible future for my character, Jeanette Palmer, and Japonisme. I have thought for a long time that children's book illustrations could be one direction for her career to take. In that connection, the Red Rose Girls offer lots of hints. And now, although I don't yet know a thing about it really, the influence of Japanese woodcuts on early twentieth century illustrators seems clear. So hurrah for Helen Hyde! She actually went to Japan and learned woodcut technique. A quick search on-line has quickly turned up three informative, well illustrated websites to get me started: (1) An American in Japan: Helen Hyde. (2) Pioneering Women Printmakers: Helen Hyde and Lilian May Miller in Japan. And (3) In Memoriam Helen Hyde, American Japoniste. If you only look at the picture, enjoy!

A quick follow-up to Bernhardt and Japonisme. Here's a decorated fan painted by female artist Louise Abbéma portraying Sarah Bernhardt in a kimono. What better to inspire some detail or other for a new story set among women in Paris at the time of the 1889 Universal Exposition? For more about the vogue among Western artists for painting Asian-influenced fans, click here.
 
Image via Wikipedia Commons.