Cassatt and Japanese Art

A figure can be described by a few firm contours while patterned fabric occupies a broad area beside it. An open field of paper can make a small embrace more conspicuous. A mirror can repeat a body without making the surrounding room look deep. These are useful starting points for examining Mary Cassatt’s engagement with Japanese prints: specific visual choices that she adapted through her own subjects and methods.

The National Gallery of Art connects Cassatt’s encounter with the major Japanese-print exhibition in Paris in 1890 to her colour-print project of 1890–91. Its account describes an artist already interested in Japanese prints who took their possibilities into an ambitious group of colour intaglio designs. ^[1]

The term Japonisme helps place that engagement within the reception of Japanese art. It is less useful when treated as an automatic explanation for every cropped figure or patterned surface. A stronger account identifies the work, describes the relevant resemblance and difference, and keeps a visual comparison distinct from proof that Cassatt owned or copied one particular sheet.

The 1890 encounter and a new colour project

Cassatt’s response to the 1890 exhibition is important because it connects looking with a sustained technical undertaking. The National Gallery describes the stimulus in relation to the group now known as the Set of Ten and to her work with printer Modeste Leroy. It also transmits her enthusiastic correspondence with Berthe Morisot; that correspondence is mediated through the museum account here, rather than quoted from a newly inspected autograph. ^[1]

The resulting subjects were not a single repeated image. They included hair arranging, bathing, writing, fitting a dress, tea drinking and travel. Similar attention to contour and broad colour areas could consequently be tested against different bodily actions and settings. Adaptation involved choosing what a formal possibility could do within another composition.

A print of a woman at a mirror, for example, presents a different problem from a group of passengers in public transport. One can repeat a head and arms through reflection; the other must relate seated bodies to a surrounding interior. The connection with Japanese prints does not remove those differences. It makes the artist’s individual decisions worth examining more closely.

The date also deserves precision. The exhibition encounter belongs to 1890, while the colour designs span 1890–91. The later results should not be reduced to an instantaneous conversion at an exhibition door. Their making required methods, trials and collaboration in addition to an initial stimulus.

Looking at one actual Utamaro print

Kitagawa Utamaro’s Takashima Ohisa provides a specific Japanese comparison. The Edo-Tokyo Museum’s record identifies its sheet, accession 16200004, as a 1793 nishiki-e, a polychrome woodblock print, published by Tsutaya Juzaburo. This is the Tokyo example, not another impression with a similar title in a different collection. ^[4]

Ohisa’s dark hair makes a broad, carefully shaped mass above a pale face and long neck. Hair ornaments extend through it as thin contrasting forms. Below, the robe carries repeated pattern, while a rigid oval fan crosses the chest. The fan has its own motifs and a definite outline, separating it from both the fabric and the light skin.

The head turns differently from the torso. That change gives the upper body movement even though the composition contains relatively little modelling through deep shadow. Contours and the placement of adjacent shapes do much of the descriptive work. The figure is neither a flat emblem nor a body explained by continuous transitions from light into shade.

A column of printed verse occupies the upper-left field. It adds another kind of mark beside the head and costume, while the surrounding open ground leaves the silhouette easy to follow. Written language, patterned fabric and the figure therefore belong to one design, although they perform different jobs within it.

The museum identifies Ohisa with a family tea-house business. Its account explains how the fan’s crest and the accompanying poem indicate her identity in the context of restrictions on naming women other than courtesans in such prints. That particular history is a reminder that a Japanese image had meanings beyond the formal qualities a later viewer might admire. ^[4]

It would consequently be misleading to call every woman in a Japanese beauty print a courtesan, or to transfer that occupation to a woman represented by Cassatt. The exact museum identification matters. So does the limit of the comparison: no evidence presented here establishes that Cassatt saw or owned this Tokyo sheet, or that it was among the works she encountered in 1890.

The Coiffure: a different organisation of a body

Cassatt’s The Coiffure provides a productive comparison because it also gives contour, pale flesh and patterned fabric substantial roles. The Metropolitan Museum’s example, accession 16.2.3, is a colour print from three plates in its fifth and final state. The museum discusses it in relation to Japanese toilette imagery and Utamaro. That is a curatorial comparison, not an identification of Cassatt’s sitter as a particular Japanese social type. ^[2]

In Cassatt’s image, the figure raises her arms to arrange her hair. A large mirror repeats the head, arms and part of the chair. The doubled pose creates a relation between an actual back and a reflected front, making the body visible from more than one direction within the same print.

Utamaro’s Ohisa presents a single upper body with a fan across the robe. Cassatt instead places the hair-arranging figure inside a room dense with repeating surfaces. The chair carries stripes, the wall has a separate pattern, and another patterned area extends beneath the figure. The mirror adds a second version of some forms while its frame divides the interior.

Both images can be examined through fine outlines and broad adjacent areas, but their arrangements differ markedly. A long pale neck against dark fabric does different work from bent elbows above a chair. The fan’s closed oval differs from the opening made by two raised arms. Those differences are essential to understanding adaptation as an active choice.

The printed verse also gives Ohisa’s surrounding field an asymmetry absent from a simple blank backdrop. Its narrow vertical boundary balances the wider head and fan without enclosing them in a room. In Cassatt’s mirror scene, vertical divisions belong instead to the reflected setting and its frame. Both designs place a figure beside another organised area, but written verse and a mirror ask the viewer to do different things: attend to a separate inscription, or recognise a repeated view of the same body. This comparison concerns the placement of visible forms, without claiming a translation of the poem from the image.

The comparison is therefore an exercise in looking, with a historically documented general connection supplied by the museum account. It is not a demonstration that one print served as a traced template for the other. Similarity gives us a question to investigate; a specific source relationship requires additional evidence.

Pattern can coexist with bodily weight

Pattern makes a surface conspicuous, but it need not eliminate the sense of a body beneath it. In The Coiffure, the striped chair follows a large curved form, while the cloth around the lower figure changes direction across the seat. The image can register as a set of attractive colour areas while still making the seated pose understandable.

The meeting of patterned and unpatterned areas is particularly informative. Pale arms can be followed against a busier wall, and the figure’s upper back remains open compared with the stripes beside it. Different densities of mark separate flesh, furniture and room without requiring every form to be surrounded by deep shadow.

Ohisa’s robe and fan create another version of that relationship. Their patterns help distinguish adjacent objects, while the collar’s contour clarifies the turn from neck to torso. The patterns are not interchangeable decoration placed on top of an otherwise complete body. They participate in how the body and held object are understood.

Calling both pictures flat would describe only part of their effect. Broad printed colour asserts the surface, but overlapping contours, bends and repeated views still create spatial relationships. The useful question is how each image balances those functions, rather than whether it belongs entirely to a flat or a deep kind of picture.

Woman Bathing: colour around a practical action

The Metropolitan Museum’s Woman Bathing (La Toilette), accession 16.2.2, is another distinct design from 1890–91. Its selected example is printed from three plates in a fourth and final state. It should not inherit The Coiffure’s state number merely because the works belong to the same project. ^[3]

Here the body bends over a basin, with its back turned towards the viewer. A mirror gives a partial second view. The washstand introduces strong straight divisions, while the striped cloth around the lower body descends against a differently patterned floor. The figure’s action relates those competing surfaces to a definite task.

The large blue-green background differs from the figure’s light skin and warm furniture. A jug near the lower edge creates another rounded pale form, separate from the basin above. Cassatt uses objects at different heights to organise the lower and upper parts of the print, while the pattern keeps the surrounding field active.

Comparing the two toilette designs shows why a general Japanese connection does not produce one standard formula. The Coiffure opens the arms above an upright seated body; Woman Bathing bends the torso forward. One has a more extensive reflected front; the other gives a narrower reflected fragment. Pattern and contour serve different actions.

The open upper field of Mother’s Kiss

Mother’s Kiss adds a strikingly different balance. The National Gallery’s impression, accession 1963.10.254, preserves a substantial open area above the embracing figures. That field belongs to the composition within its plate boundary, as well as there being paper margins outside it. ^[5]

The figures occupy the lower part, where the adult’s lowered head meets the child’s face. Pattern spreads across a broad garment and chair, while the child’s pale body remains less densely marked. The kiss is concentrated in a small junction of heads, but the space around it helps determine how strongly that junction registers.

If the image were tightly cropped around the faces, the embrace might remain recognisable while its balance changed considerably. The large upper field gives the compact group another scale within the vertical sheet. Looking at the full impression reveals that relationship more clearly than a close detail alone can.

The difference from The Coiffure is instructive. Both use contour and patterned material, yet one surrounds a repeated body with a densely organised interior, while the other leaves substantial space above a single close grouping. Japanese-print engagement is better understood through that range of choices than through a requirement that every composition look alike.

Open space also should not be treated as proof of one particular copied source. It is a compositional feature with several possible uses. The full sheet permits us to describe what it does here; it does not establish the ownership or direct use of a named Utamaro impression.

Woodblock and intaglio are different processes

Utamaro’s Tokyo print is identified as a polychrome woodblock. Cassatt’s colour project uses intaglio methods, including drypoint, softground etching and aquatint. The National Gallery explains her use of separately inked plates and her work with Leroy. A visual relationship to Japanese colour printing therefore coexists with a different way of preparing and printing the image. ^{[4] [1]}

This matters because a similar broad area of colour can come from a different physical structure. In intaglio, lines and tonal areas are worked into a plate and printed under pressure. The plates must also align when several contribute to one image. The result can refer to the colour relationships of another tradition without using its matrix.

The Metropolitan Museum’s three-plate examples give that explanation a precise object basis. Their number of plates and final-state labels belong to the individual designs and selected impressions. They do not supply a universal count for all Cassatt prints or establish that every surviving copy has identical colour and paper. ^{[2] [3]}

Her printmaking is consequently central to the account of Japonisme. It shows how an encounter with another visual tradition could prompt experiments within a materially different practice. Recognising the difference makes the technical undertaking more substantial, rather than weakening the historical connection.

What an influence claim needs

There are several levels of claim. A museum account can document the importance of the 1890 exhibition. A close comparison can explain how two exact images use contour or pattern. Evidence that an artist owned, saw or directly adapted one named sheet would establish something more specific. Those levels should remain distinct.

The Tokyo Ohisa comparison belongs to the second level, within the larger historical context of the first. It permits careful discussion of a turned head, patterned robe, held fan and open ground beside Cassatt’s raised arms, mirrors and interiors. It does not establish the third level of a direct source relationship.

The distinction also protects the Japanese work’s specificity. It is a dated print of a named figure, with a publisher and culturally particular identifying devices. Reducing it to a generic example of flatness would erase much of what its actual record and image contribute. Examining difference gives both works more room to be understood.

From print comparisons to the wider career

Cassatt’s paintings also invite questions about cropping, viewpoint and patterned surfaces. Yet those features should be examined in the individual work before being assigned to a single source. A near figure, a tilted ground or a cut-off object can perform different jobs in a boat, an interior or a garden.

The biography places the 1890 encounter within a longer career rather than treating it as an explanation for everything before and after it. Earlier professional experience, later material experiments and the different demands of each subject remain part of the story.

The clearest evidence of Japonisme here is a productive relationship between looking and making. Cassatt encountered Japanese prints, developed a sustained colour project, and tested contour, colour, pattern and space through her own compositions. Exact comparisons reveal that process most clearly when they show what she changed as well as what a viewer can recognise as related.