Stylogenyin the style of Japonisme

Craft & organic · 1860–1910 · Western Europe, North America, Central Europe

Japonisme

Also known as Japanism, Anglo-Japanese style

The Western absorption of Japanese woodblock prints, textiles and crafts after Japan reopened to trade in the 1850s. Artists and designers borrowed ukiyo-e's flat colour, bold contours, off-centre and cropped compositions, high viewpoints and crest-like emblems; these devices dissolved academic perspective and set the visual grammar of the modern poster and of Art Nouveau.

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A woman in a blue floral kimono with an orange sash stands at a wooden railing overlooking a winding river, lily pads, distant hills and Japanese-style buildings. Red flowering branches hang overhead, and “RIVIÈRE” appears across the upper right.
AI-generated by Stylogeny from the style’s design choices. Not a real or historical work.

01

How it works

  • Place the main subject off-centre and crop figures and objects abruptly at the edges of the frame.
  • Flatten space: lay down unmodulated areas of colour bounded by firm contour lines instead of modelling with light and shade.
  • Use a high or oblique viewpoint, steep diagonals and an empty foreground or sky as an active part of the composition.
  • Favour tall, narrow or unusual formats derived from hanging scrolls and pillar prints.
  • Sign with a compact monogram or seal-like emblem and keep lettering short, often in a small cartouche.
  • Reduce waves, irises, cranes, bamboo and chrysanthemums to simplified silhouettes.

Paris and London, after Japanese prints reached Europe in the late 1850s and were shown at the 1862 London and 1867 Paris exhibitions

02

Its design choices

From Stylogeny’s vocabulary of design choices: defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

Layout & composition
Space & hierarchy
Typography
Colour
Form & shape
Surface & texture
Ornament
Imagery
Medium & production
Tone & intent
Avoids
Central symmetry, Horror vacui, Naturalistic depiction, Eclectic mixing, Straight photography

Palette

  • #f1e6cf
  • #22201e
  • #2b4c7e
  • #c8452c
  • #d9b26f
  • #8fa58a

Typefaces

  • Auriol

    George Auriol, G. Peignot et Fils, 1901

  • Brush-drawn display lettering imitating Japanese calligraphy

  • Seal-like artists' monograms and vertical title cartouches

Known for

  • James McNeill Whistler

    Peacock Room, 1876–77; butterfly monogram

  • Félix Bracquemond

    Service Rousseau, 1866–67

  • Siegfried Bing, Le Japon artistique

    1888–1891

  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

    Divan Japonais, 1893

  • Henri Rivière

    Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower, 1902

  • Arthur Wesley Dow

    Composition, 1899

  • Vincent van Gogh

    copies after Hiroshige, 1887

03

Make something in this style

Say what you need, and Stylogeny’s image studio draws it from Japonisme’s design choices and checks it against them. It takes about a minute, and you get a link to share.

Rule out a choice, read the prompt, or blend in another style: take this brief to Mix styles.

04

Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

Before it

The style it grew out of, and the styles it borrowed from.

This styleJaponisme1860–1910 · Western Europe, North America, Central Europe

After it

The styles that grew out of it.

No later style in the atlas grew out of it yet.

Alike in its design choices

Styles that make many of the same choices, related or not, besides those above.

05

Real works

Artefacts in museums, libraries and archives that show the style, linked at their source.

06

Sources

  1. Gabriel P. Weisberg et al., Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French Art 1854–1910 (Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975)
  2. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 'Japonisme' (metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jpon/hd_jpon.htm)
  3. Philip B. Meggs & Alston W. Purvis, Meggs' History of Graphic Design

How Stylogeny researches and checks a style: where the facts come from.