Japanese Woodblock Prints

From Edouard Manet s portrait of naturalist writer Émile Zola sitting among his Japanese art finds to Van Gogh s meticulous copies of the Hiroshige prints he devotedly collected, 19th-century pioneers of European modernism made no secret of their love of Japanese art. In all its sensuality, freedom, and effervescence, the woodblock print is single-handedly credited with the wave of japonaiserie that first enthralled France and, later, all of Europe but often remains misunderstood as an exotic artifact that helped inspire Western creativity.