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Georgina Berkeley (English, 1831-1919). Untitled page from the Berkeley Album, 1867/71. Collage of watercolor and albumen prints. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY. |
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Constance Sackville-West (English, 1846-1929) or Amy Augusta Frederica Annabella Cochrane-Baillie (English, 1853-1913). Untitled page from the Sackville-West Album, 1867/73. Collage of watercolor and albumen prints. Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. |
Georgina Berkeley (English, 1831-1919). Untitled page from the Berkeley Album, 1867/71. Collage of watercolor and albumen prints. Musée d’Orsay, Paris. Photo credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY.
Frances Elizabeth, Viscountess Jocelyn (English, 1820–1880). “Diamond Shape with Nine Studio Portraits of the Palmerston Family and a Painted Cherry Blossom Surround,” from the Jocelyn Album, 1860s. Collage of watercolor and albumen prints. National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Elizabeth Pleydell-Bouverie (English, died 1889) and Jane Pleydell-Bouverie (English, died 1903) or Ellen Pleydell-Bouverie (English, 1849-?) and Janet Pleydell-Bouverie (English, 1850-1906). Untitled page from the Bouverie Album, 1872/77. Collage of watercolor and albumen prints. Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film. |
Metropolitan Museum of Art In the 1860s and 1870s, long before the embrace of collage techniques by avant-garde artists of the early 20th century, aristocratic Victorian women were experimenting with photocollage. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage is the first exhibition to comprehensively examine this little-known phenomenon. Whimsical and fantastical Victorian photocollages, created using a combination of watercolor drawings and cut-and-pasted photographs, reveal the educated minds as well as accomplished hands of their makers. With subjects as varied as new theories of evolution, the changing role of photography, and the strict conventions of aristocratic society, the photocollages frequently debunked stuffy Victorian clichés with surreal, subversive, and funny images. Featuring approximately 50 works from public and private collections — including many that have rarely or never been exhibited before —Playing with Pictures provides a fascinating window into the creative possibilities of photography in the 19th century. In England in the 1850s and 1860s, photography became remarkably popular and accessible as people posed for studio portraits and exchanged these pictures on a vast scale. The craze for cartes de visite — photographic portraits the size of a visiting card — led to the widespread hobby of collecting small photographs of family, friends, acquaintances, and celebrities in scrapbooks. Rather than simply gathering such portraits in the standard albums manufactured to hold cartes de visite, the amateur women artists who made the photocollages displayed in Playing with Pictures cut up these photographic portraits and placed them in elaborate watercolor designs in their personal albums. With sharp wit and dramatic shifts of scale akin to those Alice experienced in Wonderland, Victorian photocollages stand the rather serious conventions of early photography on their heads. Often, the combination of photographs with painted settings inspired dreamlike and even bizarre results: placing human heads on animal bodies; situating people in imaginary landscapes; and morphing faces into common household objects and fashionable accessories. Such albums advertised the artistic accomplishments of the aristocratic women who made them, while also serving as a form of parlor entertainment and an opportunity for conversation and flirtation with the opposite sex. |
Marie-Blanche-Hennelle Fournier (French, 1831-1906). Untitled page from the Madame B Album, 1870s. Collage of watercolor, ink, and albumen prints. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mary and Leigh Block Endowment. |
Mary Georgiana Caroline, Lady Filmer (English, 1838-1903). Untitled, loose page from the Filmer Album, mid-1860s, Collage of watercolor and albumen prints, Paul F. Walter.
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Autumn Grasses in Moonlight, Meiji period (1868-1912), ca. 1872-91, Shibata Zeshin (Japanese, 1807-1891), Two-panel folding screen; ink, lacquer, and silver leaf on paper, 26-1/8 x 69", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.137). |
Dish with a handle (tebachi) in the shape of a double fan, Momoyama period (1573-1615), late 16th-early 17th century, Japanese Stoneware with overglaze enamels (Mino ware, Oribe type), H. 5-7/8", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.443).
Needles, hooks, and harpoon, Final Jomon period (ca. 1000-300 B.C.), Japan, Bone, The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.333-345).
Haniwa boar, Kofun period (ca. 3rd century-538), 5th century, Japan, Earthenware, L. 4-7/8', The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.418).
Bracelet, Kofun period (ca. 3rd century-538), 4th century, Japan, Steatite, H. 8-1/2", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.388).
Large jar, late Kofun or Asuka period (ca. 3rd century-710), 6th-7th century, Japan, Stoneware with natural ash glaze and comb and cord markings (Sue ware), H. 19-3/5", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.420).
Storage jar, late Yayoi period (ca. 4th century B.C.-3rd century A.D.), ca. 100-200, Japan, Earthenware with incised decoration, H. 10-3/4", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.375).
Storage jar, Yayoi period (ca. 4th century B.C.-3rd century A.D.), Japan, Earthenware, H. 10", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.378).
Long-necked bottle, Nara period (710-794), 8th century, Japan, Stoneware with natural ash glaze and incised, decoration (Sue ware), H. 8-1/2", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.425).
Bottle, Late Jomon period (ca. 1500-1000 B.C.), Japan, Earthenware with incised designs, H. 7-1/2", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.184).
Miniature pagoda, early Nara period (710-794; ca. 767), Japan, Wood, H. 8-1/4", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.150ab).
Storage jar, Muromachi period (1392-1573), 14th-15th century; Shigaraki ware, Japan, Stoneware with natural ash glaze, H. 18-3/8", W. 15-1/2", The Harry G.C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G.C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.428).
Bust of a warrior, Kofun period (ca. 3rd century-538), 5th-6th century, Kanto region, Japan, Earthenware with painted, incised, and applied decoration, H. 13-1/8", W. 10 7/8", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.414).
Bust of a female figurine, Final Jomon period (ca. 1000-300 B.C.), Japan, Earthenware with incised and cord-marked designs, H. 6-1/2", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.191).
Inro with decoration of Portuguese figures, Edo period, (1615-1868), 17th century, Wood with black and gold lacquer, H. 3-9/16", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.178).
Zao Gongen, Heian period (794-1185), 11th-?12th century, Japan, Gilt bronze, H. 13-5/8", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.155).
Poem page mounted as a hanging scroll, Momoyama period (1573-1615), dated 1606, Painting by Tawaraya Sotatsu (Japanese, active early 17th century); Calligraphy by Hon'ami Koetsu (Japanese, 1558-1637), Ink on paper decorated with gold and silver, 7-7/8 x 7", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.59).
Spearhead, Late Jomon period (ca. 1500-1000 B.C.), Japan, Stone, L. 3-1/8", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.200). |
Metropolitan Museum of Art The Packard collection of more than 400 objects ended up at the Met in 1975. The purchase was the museum’s most expensive up to that time. Harry G. C. Packard, a Navy officer in Tokyo with the U.S. occupation, started learning about Japanese art in 1946. Upon returning to the U.S. Packard went to graduate school, majoring in art history, after which he returned to Japan for further research. Almost 40, he had already begun buying Japanese art in bulk — at first, prints, then older things — and selling off what he didn't keep (notable American athlete, sports official, art collector, and philanthropist Avery Brundage was a client and friend). Packard took an autodicactic path in furthering his Japanese art education: he learned about Japanese art as he bought it. Before his death in 1991 he had compiled the largest Japanese collection in America, its contents dating from the Neolithic period to the 20th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the collection in 1975, by gift and purchase (more than 400 works of Japanese art). This acquisition, daring at the time with a price tag of $5.1 million, transformed the Museum into an institution with one of the most significant collections of Japanese art in the West, comprised of encyclopedic holdings from the Neolithic period through the 19th century. The Metropolitan Museum celebrates the 35th anniversary of the acquisition with the installation Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art: Treasures from the Packard Collection. Featuring more than 220 works, it showcases the collection's particular strengths in archaeological artifacts, Buddhist iconographic scrolls, screen paintings of the Momoyama and Edo periods (16th-19th century), and sculptures of the Heian and Kamakura periods (ninth-14th century), as well as a comprehensive selection of ceramics. Some of the works have never been on public display, while others have rarely been shown because of conservation considerations. Highlights are a pairing of masterpieces by a Kano school master and his son: Old Plum, a set of sliding-door panels by Kano Sansetsu (1589-1651) in the Packard Collection; and One Hundred Boys, a pair of six-fold screens by Kano Einô (1631-1697), which was acquired this year. The installation encompasses several eras of Japanese art as described by the Department of Asian Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Jomon period (ca. 10,500-ca. 300 B.C.), which encompasses a great expanse of time, constitutes Japan's Neolithic period. Its name is derived from the "cord markings" that characterize the ceramics made during this time. Jomon people were semi-sedentary, living mostly in pit dwellings arranged around central open spaces, and obtained their food by gathering, fishing, and hunting. While the many excavations of Jomon sites have added to our knowledge of specific artifacts, they have not helped to resolve certain fundamental questions concerning the people of the protoliterate era, such as their ethnic classification and the origin of their language. All Jomon pots were made by hand, without the aid of a wheel, the potter building up the vessel from the bottom with coil upon coil of soft clay. As in all other Neolithic cultures, women produced these early potteries. The clay was mixed with a variety of adhesive materials, including mica, lead, fibers, and crushed shells. After the vessel was formed, tools were employed to smooth both the outer and interior surfaces. When completely dry, it was fired in an outdoor bonfire at a temperature of no more than about 900° C. Because the Jomon period lasted so long and is so culturally diverse, historians and archaeologists often divide it into the following phases. Incipient Jomon (ca. 10,500-8000 B.C.). This period marks the transition between Paleolithic and Neolithic ways of life. Archaeological findings indicate that people lived in simple surface dwellings and fed themselves through hunting and gathering. They produced deep pottery cooking containers with pointed bottoms and rudimentary cord markings—among the oldest examples of pottery known in the world. Initial Jomon (ca. 8000-5000 B.C.). By this period, the gradual climatic warming that had begun around 10,000 B.C. sufficiently raised sea levels, so that the southern islands of Shikoku and Kyushu were separated from the main island of Honshu. The rise in temperature also increased the food supply, which was derived from the sea as well as by hunting animals and gathering plants, fruits, and seeds. Evidence of this diet is found in shell mounds, or ancient refuse heaps. Food and other necessities of life were acquired and processed with the use of stone tools such as grinding rocks, knives, and axes. Early Jomon (ca. 5000-2500 B.C.). The contents of huge shell mounds show that a high percentage of people's daily diet continued to come from the oceans. Similarities between pottery produced in Kyushu and contemporary Korea suggest that regular commerce existed between the Japanese islands and Korean peninsula. The inhabitants of the Japanese islands lived in square-shaped pithouses that were clustered in small villages. A variety of handicrafts, including cord-marked earthenware cooking and storage vessels, woven baskets, bone needles, and stone tools, were produced for daily use. Middle Jomon (ca. 2500-1500 B.C.). This period marked the high point of the Jomon culture in terms of increased population and production of handicrafts. The warming climate peaked in temperature during this era, causing a movement of communities into the mountain regions. Refuse heaps indicate that the people were sedentary for longer periods and lived in larger communities; they fished, hunted animals such as deer, bear, rabbit, and duck, and gathered nuts, berries, mushrooms, and parsley. Early attempts at plant cultivation may date to this period. The increased production of female figurines and phallic images of stone, as well as the practice of burying the deceased in shell mounds, suggest a rise in ritual practices. Late Jomon (ca. 1500-1000 B.C.). As the climate began to cool, the population migrated out of the mountains and settled closer to the coast, especially along Honshu's eastern shores. Greater reliance on seafood inspired innovations in fishing technology, such as the development of the toggle harpoon and deep-sea fishing techniques. This process brought communities into closer contact, as indicated by greater similarity among artifacts. Circular ceremonial sites comprised of assembled stones, in some cases numbering in the thousands, and larger numbers of figurines show a continued increase in the importance and enactment of rituals. Final Jomon (ca. 1000-300 B.C.). As the climate cooled and food became less abundant, the population declined dramatically. Because people were assembled in smaller groups, regional differences became more pronounced. As part of the transition to the •Yayoi culture (ca. 4th century B.C.–3rd century A.D.), it is believed that domesticated rice, grown in dry beds or swamps, was introduced into Japan at this time. Beginning about the fourth century B.C., Jomon culture was gradually replaced by the more advanced Yayoi culture, which takes its name from the site in Tokyo where pottery of this period was first discovered in 1884. The new culture first appeared in western Japan and then spread east and north to Honshu. While some aspects of Yayoi society evolved from the Jomon, more important to its development was the technique of wet-rice cultivation, which is thought to have been introduced to Japan from Korea and southeastern China sometime between 1000 B.C. and the first century A.D. In keeping with an agrarian lifestyle, the people of the Yayoi culture lived in permanently settled communities, made up of thatched houses clustered into villages. In striking contrast to Jomon pottery, Yayoi vessels have clean, functional shapes. Nonetheless, the technical process of pottery making remained essentially the same, and in all likelihood women using the coil method continued to be the primary producers. Two technical differences, however, are significant: the fine clay surfaces of Yayoi vessels were smoothed, and clay slip was sometimes applied over the body to make it less porous. Many Yayoi vessels resemble pots found in Korea, and some scholars have proposed that the Yayoi style originated in that land, arriving first in northern Kyushu and gradually spreading northeastward. Nevertheless, some pieces clearly show the influence of Jomon ceramics, leading others to speculate that Yayoi wares were the product of an indigenous evolution from the less elaborate Jomon wares of northern Kyushu. Metallurgy was also introduced from the Asian mainland during this time. Bronze and iron were used to make weapons, armor, tools, and ritual implements such as bells (dotaku). The latter were frequently decorated with hatched lines, triangles, spirals, and geometric patterns, although representations of domesticated animals and scenes of daily life appear on some examples. A class society began to emerge during the Yayoi period. Over time, the Yayoi people grouped themselves into clan-nations, which by the first century numbered more than a hundred. Throughout the second and third centuries, the clans fought among themselves until the Yamato clan gained dominance in the fifth century. The Kofun period (ca. 3rd century-538) is named after the tomb mounds that were built for members of the ruling class during this time. The practice of building sepulchral mounds and burying treasures with the dead was transmitted to Japan from the Asian continent about the third century A.D. In the late fourth and fifth century, mounds of monumental proportions were built in great numbers, symbolizing the increasingly unified power of the government. In the late fifth century, power fell to the Yamato clan, which won control over much of Honshu island and the northern half of Kyushu and eventually established Japan's imperial line. Burial chambers and sarcophagi in the early tombs were simple and unadorned. Painted decorations began to appear by the sixth century. The bodies of the dead were interred in large wooden coffins; burial goods — bronze mirrors, tools, weapons, personal ornaments, horse trappings, and clay vessels — accompanied the coffins into the tomb chambers. Burial mounds were circled with stones. Packed in rows at the base, scattered on the crest of the knoll, or placed on the sloping sides of the mound were haniwa (clay cylinders). These hollow clay tubes served as stands for offering vessels when the tombs were the focus of community ritual. Although most haniwa are unadorned, some are topped with sculptures. A notable contribution to pottery during the Kofun period was Sueki ware, first produced in the mid-fifth century. Sueki pottery is usually made of blue-gray clay and is often thin-bodied and hard, having been fired at temperatures of roughly 1,100 to 1,200° C, a range similar to that used to produce modern stoneware and porcelain. Although the roots of Sueki reach back to ancient China, its direct precursor is the grayware of the Three Kingdoms period in Korea. Technically more advanced than Jomon and Yayoi pottery, Sueki marks a turning point in the history of Japanese ceramics. The potter's wheel was used for the first time, and Sueki were fired in a Korean-style anagama kiln, made of a single tunnel-like chamber half buried in the ground along the slope of a hill. Green glaze, evolving from the appearance of natural ash glaze that resulted from accidental effects inside the kiln, was intentionally applied to ceremonial objects beginning in the second half of the seventh century. Japan's first historical epoch — the Asuka and Nara Periods (538–794), named for the area near Nara where the court resided — coincides with the introduction of Buddhism into the country. This new religion contained many ideas and images that were radically different from the concerns of native Shinto. Along with Buddhism, other important foreign concepts and practices, including the Chinese written language, the practice of recording history, the use of coins, and the standardization of weights and measures — all of which supported the creation of a single-ruler state based on the Chinese model of a centralized, bureaucratic government — were imported from China and Korea. Taken together, these imports had a profound impact on all aspects of Japanese society. Until the eighth century, a new capital city was founded and a new imperial palace constructed each time a new emperor succeeded to the throne. The reorganization of the Japanese court into a more complex system based on the Chinese model, whereby the emperor ruled the entire country through hand-picked governors who administered laws and extracted taxes, intensified the desire for a permanent capital. Heijokyo in Nara was chosen to serve this purpose in 710. Also inspired by Chinese precedent, Japan's first histories, the Kojiki and Nihon shoki, were compiled at this time. Chinese precedent can again be seen in the decision by the Japanese court to adopt Buddhism as the official religion and begin the faith's most active period of imperial patronage, constructing large temples in the capital, as well as many others in the provinces throughout the country. Only three-quarters of a century after Nara was built at enormous cost, the capital was moved again, motivated at least in part by a desire to escape the burdensome pressure of the Buddhist temples, which had grown wealthy and powerful. The excessive influence and avarice of the Buddhist establishment, the imposition of heavy taxes of rice, products, and corvée labor, and an increase in challenges to the authority of the central government by provincial officials led to social and political unrest in the last decades of this period. Heian Period (794-1185)— The new capital was established in Heian-kyo (capital of "peace and tranquility," now known as Kyoto) in 794. Like Nara, it was laid out according to a grid pattern, following the Chinese precedent. Kyoto remained the nation's capital, albeit at times in name only, until 1867. In Kyoto, the court enjoyed a relatively long period of peace and political strength lasting nearly 400 years, until 1185. One of the most influential groups of the Heian era was the aristocratic Fujiwara family. The Fujiwaras succeeded in dominating the royal family by marrying female clan members to emperors and then ruling on behalf of the offspring of these unions when they assumed the throne. Not only did the powerful aristocratic Fujiwaras control the politics of this era, but they also dominated the cultural milieu. Fujiwara courtiers encouraged an aura of courtly sophistication and sensitivity in all of their activities, including the visual and literary arts, and even religious practice. This refined sensibility and interest in the arts is clearly expressed in the literary classic The Tale of Genji, written by a member of the Fujiwara clan. After absorbing so much from the continent over several centuries, the Japanese began to experience a growing sense of self-confidence and appreciation of their own land and heritage. Although trade expeditions and Buddhist pilgrims continued to travel between Japan and the continent, the court decided to terminate official relations with China. Among the important cultural developments of this time of internal cultural concentration were the kana script, which facilitated the writing of Japanese; the cultivation of waka poetry and other distinctive literary forms, for instance, narrative tales (monogatari) and diaries (nikki); and a characteristically Japanese painting style, yamato-e. Yamato-e was used to depict native scenes or illustrate native literature, in contrast to kara-e, or Chinese-style, painting, which was used for scenery and tales of China. Since few examples of yamato-e painted before the mid-twelfth century survive, it is difficult to determine the early stylistic differences between yamato-e and kara-e. Documents indicate, however, that Kyoto residents were deeply moved by the subtle seasonal changes that colored the hills and mountains surrounding them and regulated the patterns of daily life. By the second half of the twelfth century, domination by the Fujiwaras had waned and political power had shifted from the nobility in Kyoto to military landowners in the provinces. In 1185, one of two powerful warrior clans, the Genji, defeated their chief rivals, the Heike, and succeeding in establishing in Kamakura a government controlled for the first time in history by military generals, or shoguns. Kamakura and Nanbokucho Periods (1185-1392)— The Kamakura period was marked by a gradual shift in power from the nobility to landowning military men in the provinces. This era was a time of dramatic transformation in the politics, society, and culture of Japan. The bakufu, or government by warrior chieftains (shogun) or their regents, controlled the country from their base in Kamakura, near modern Tokyo. Because the emperor remained the titular head of state in his capital in Kyoto, a binary system of government, whereby emperors reigned but shoguns ruled, was established and endured for the next seven centuries. In 1333, a coalition of supporters of Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339), who sought to restore political power to the throne, toppled the Kamakura regime. Unable to rule effectively, this new royal government was short-lived. In 1336, a member of a branch family of the Minamoto clan, Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358), usurped control and drove Go-Daigo from Kyoto. Takauji then set a rival on the throne and established a new military government in Kyoto. Meanwhile, Go-Daigo traveled south and took refuge in Yoshino. There he established the Southern Court, in contrast to the rival Northern Court supported by Takauji. This time of constant strife that lasted from 1336 to 1392 is known as the Nanbokucho period (Period of Southern and Northern Courts). The Kamakura and Nanbokucho eras were remarkable for the shift that occurred in the Japanese aesthetic. The highly refined sensibilities of the superceded aristocracy did not interest the new patrons. Instead, the warrior class favored artists who treated their subjects with a direct honesty and virile energy that matched their own. What followed, then, was an age of realism unparalleled before the late eighteenth century. This renascence was not limited to art. Religious movements experienced a similar resurgence, and reform and counter-reform currents animated and transmuted Kamakura Buddhism. While the courtly and warrior elites perpetuated the Heian traditions of Amida worship and Esoteric Buddhism, for the first time in its history Buddhism was also actively proselytized among the Japanese masses. Muromachi Period (1392–1573)— The era when members of the Ashikaga family occupied the position of shogun is known as the Muromachi period, named after the district in Kyoto where their headquarters was located. Although the Ashikaga clan occupied the shogunate for nearly 200 years, they never succeeded in extending their political control as far as did the Kamakura bakufu. Because provincial warlords, called daimyo, retained a large degree of power, they were able to strongly influence political events and cultural trends during this time. Rivalry between daimyo, whose power increased in relation to the central government as time passed, generated instability, and conflict soon erupted, culminating in the Onin War (1467-77). With the resulting destruction of Kyoto and the collapse of the shogunate's power, the country was plunged into a century of warfare and social chaos known as the Sengoku, the Age of the Country at War, which extended from the last quarter of the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth century. Despite the social and political upheaval, the Muromachi period was economically and artistically innovative. This epoch saw the first steps in the establishment of modern commercial, transportation, and urban developments. Contact with China, which had been resumed in the Kamakura period, once again enriched and transformed Japanese thought and aesthetics. One of the imports that was to have a far-reaching impact was Zen Buddhism. Although known in Japan since the seventh century, Zen was enthusiastically embraced by the military class beginning in the thirteenth century and went on to have a profound effect on all aspects of national life, from government and commerce to the arts and education. Kyoto, which, as the imperial capital, had never ceased to exert an enormous influence on the country's culture, once again became the seat of political power under the Ashikaga shoguns. The private villas that the Ashikaga shoguns built there served as elegant settings for the pursuit of art and culture. While tea drinking had been brought to Japan from China in earlier centuries, in the fifteenth century, a small coterie of highly cultivated men, influenced by Zen ideals, developed the basic principles of the tea (chanoyu) aesthetic. At its highest level, chanoyu involves an appreciation of garden design, architecture, interior design, calligraphy, painting, flower arranging, the decorative arts, and the preparation and service of food. These same enthusiastic patrons of the tea ceremony also lavished support on renga (linked-verse poetry) and No dance-drama, a subtle, slow-moving stage performance featuring masked and elaborately costumed actors. Momoyama Period (1573-1615)— With the decline of Ashikaga power in the 1560s, the feudal barons, or daimyos, began their struggle for control of Japan. The ensuing four decades of constant warfare are known as the Momoyama (Peach Hill) period. The name derives from the site, in a Kyoto suburb, on which Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-1598) built his Fushimi Castle. Unity was gradually restored through the efforts of three warlords. The first, Oda Nobunaga (1534-582), took control of Kyoto and deposed the last Ashikaga shogun through military might and political acuity. He was followed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who continued the campaign to reunite Japan. Peace was finally restored by one of Hideyoshi's generals, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616). The decorative style that is the hallmark of Momoyama art had its inception in the early sixteenth century and lasted well into the seventeenth. On the one hand, the art of this period was characterized by a robust, opulent, and dynamic style, with gold lavishly applied to architecture, furnishings, paintings, and garments. The ostentatiously decorated fortresses built by the daimyo for protection and to flaunt their newly acquired power exemplified this grandeur. On the other hand, the military elite also supported a counter-aesthetic of rustic simplicity, most fully expressed in the form of the tea ceremony that favored weathered, unpretentious, and imperfect settings and utensils. During this era, the attention of the Japanese was more than usually drawn beyond its shores. In addition to the continued trade with and travel to and from China and Korea, Toyotomi Hideyoshi instigated two devastating invasions of the Korean peninsula with the ultimate goal of invading China. The arrival of Portuguese and Dutch merchants and Catholic missionaries brought an awareness of different religions, new technologies, and previously unknown markets and goods to Japanese society. Over time, these foreign influences blended with native Japanese culture in myriad and long-lasting ways. Edo Period (1615-1868) — In the harshly controlled feudal society governed for over 250 years by the descendants of Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), creativity came not from its leaders, a conservative military class, but from the two lower classes in the Confucian social hierarchy, the artisans and merchants. Although officially denigrated, they were free to reap the economic and social benefits of this prosperous age. The tea ceremony, which had been adopted by every class during the Momoyama period, provided the medium in which literary and artistic traditions of the past were assimilated and transformed by highly cultivated men of both the bourgeoisie and the court. By the late 1630s, contact with the outside world was cut off through official prohibition of foreigners. In Japan's self-imposed isolation, traditions of the past were revived and refined, and ultimately parodied and transformed in the flourishing urban societies of Kyoto and Edo. Restricted trade with Chinese and Dutch merchants was permitted in Nagasaki, and it spurred development of Japanese porcelain and provided an opening for Ming literati culture to filter into artistic circles of Kyoto and, later, Edo. By the end of the seventeenth century, three distinct modes of creative expression flourished. The renaissance of Heian culture accomplished by aristocrats and cultivated Kyoto townsmen was perpetuated in the painting and crafts of the school that later came to be called Rinpa. In urban Edo, which assumed a distinctive character with its revival after a devastating fire in 1657, a witty, irreverent expression surfaced in the literary and visual arts, giving rise to the kabuki theater and the well-known woodblock prints of the "floating world," or ukiyo-e. In the eighteenth century, a Japanese response to the few threads of Chinese literati culture, introduced by Ming Chinese monks at Manpuku-ji south of Kyoto, resulted in a new style known as bunjin-ga ("literati painting"), or nanga ("painting of the southern school") after the Ming term for literati painting. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these various styles were embraced by Japanese artists and artisans as distinct but nonexclusive and complementary modes of expression. In the 19th century, Japan experiences a dramatic shift from the conservative, isolationist policies of the shogun-dominated Edo period to the rapid and widespread drive to modernize and engage with the rest of the world that characterizes the Meiji Restoration. During the first half of the century, decades of fiscal and social disruption caused by the growth of a market economy and a complex monetary system in a country that is still officially based on agriculture, which supports both the farming and privileged but unproductive samurai classes, continues to weaken the country in general and the Tokugawa regime in particular. Increasingly aggressive intrusions by Western powers not only puts pressure on Japan but convinces its political leaders that the Seclusion Policy has both limited the country's participation in technological advances and worldwide changes and has also handicapped the economy by restricting its involvement in global trade. Taking advantage of the disruption caused by these internal and external crises, in 1867 several powerful daimyo (regional warlords) band together and overthrow Shogun Yoshinobu (1837-1913), forcing him to resign authority. Marching into the imperial capital Kyoto, they "restore" Emperor Mutsuhito (1852-1912) to power and establish the Meiji ("enlightened rule") Restoration. In the name of Emperor Meiji, numerous striking and far-reaching social, political, and economic changes are legislated through a series of edicts. Japan also opens its borders, sending several high-ranking expeditions abroad and inviting foreign advisors — including educators, engineers, architects, painters, and scientists — to assist the Japanese in rapidly absorbing modern technology and Western knowledge. Throughout the century, however, the drive to Westernize is paralleled by continued isolationist tendencies and a desire to resist foreign influences. Eventually, as has happened numerous times in the nation's history, after the Japanese assimilate what has been borrowed, they use these imports to formulate a new but distinctly Japanese modern society. The installation of Five Thousand Years of Japanese Art: Treasures |
Bamboo in the Four Seasons, Muromachi period (1392-1573), Attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu (Japanese, 1434-1535), Pair of six-panel folding screens; color, ink, and gold on paper, 68-5/8 x 150-1/4", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.44,45). |
Landscape and Chinese Figures, Nagasawa Rosetsu (Japanese, 1754-1799), Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink on gilded paper, Each 67-3/8 x 146-3/4", The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975 (1975.268.75, 76). |
George Bellows (American, 1882-1925), Cliff Dwellers, 1913, Oil on canvas; 40-1/4 x 42-1/8", Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Fund (16.4), Photograph © 2009 Museum Associates / LACMA. |
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Jerome B. Thompson (American, 1814-1886), The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858, Oil on canvas; 38 x 63-1/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1969 (69.182), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910), The Veteran in a New Field, 1865, Oil on canvas; 24-1/8 x 38-1/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876-1967), 1967 (67.187.131), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
William Merritt Chase (American, 1849-1916), The Open Air Breakfast, ca. 1887, Oil on canvas; 37-1/2 x 56-3/4", Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott (1953.136), Photograph © Toledo Museum of Art, 2008.
Thomas Wilmer Dewing (American, 1851-1938), A Reading, 1897, Oil on canvas; 20-1/4 x 30-1/4", Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Henry Ward Ranger through the National Academy of Design (1948.10.5).
Mary Cassatt (American, 1844-1926), A Woman and a Girl Driving, 1881, Oil on canvas; 35-1/4 x 51-3/8", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1921 (W1921-1-1), Photograph: Graydon Wood.
Samuel F. B. Morse (American, 1791-1872), Gallery of the Louvre, 1831-33, Oil on canvas; 73-3/4 in. x 9 ft., Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection (1992.51), Photograph: Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago / Art Resource, NY.
Thomas Anshutz (American, 1851-1912), The Ironworkers' Noontime, 1880, Oil on canvas; 17 x 23-7/8", Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1979.7.4)
Seymour Joseph Guy (American, 1824-1910), Making a Train, 1867, Oil on canvas; 18-1/8 x 24-1/8", Philadelphia Museum of Art, The George W. Elkins Collection, 1924 (E1924-4-14), Photograph: Graydon Wood.
Eastman Johnson (American, 1824-1906), Negro Life at the South, 1859, Oil on canvas; 36 x 45-1/4", Collection of The New York Historical Society, The Robert L. Stuart Collection, on permanent loan from The New York Public Library (S-225).
Francis William Edmonds (American, 1806-1863), The City and Country Beaux, ca. 1838-40, Oil on canvas; 20-1/8 x 24-1/4", Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (1955.915), © Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Gilbert Stuart (American, (1755-1828)), Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick, 1790-91, Oil on canvas; 36 x 37", Philip and Charlotte Hanes.
Frank Waller (American, 1842-1923), Interior View of The Metropolitan Museum of Art when in Fourteenth Street, 1881, Oil on canvas; 24 x 20", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 1895 (95.29), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
Metropolitan Museum of Art From the decade before the Revolution to the eve of World War I, many of America's most acclaimed painters captured in their finest works the temperament of their respective eras. They recorded and defined the emerging character of Americans as individuals, citizens, and members of ever-widening communities. American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915 brings together for the first time more than 100 of these iconic pictures that tell compelling stories of life's tasks and pleasures. The first overview of the subject in more than 35 years, the exhibition includes loans from leading museums and private lenders—and many paintings from the Metropolitan's own distinguished collection. American Stories features masterpieces by John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Sloan, and George Bellows, and notable works by some of their key colleagues. The exhibition examines stories based on familiar experience and the means by which painters told their stories through their choices of settings, players, action, and various narrative devices. The artists' responses to foreign prototypes, travel and training, changing exhibition venues, and audience expectations are examined, as are their evolving styles and standards of storytelling in relation to the themes of childhood, marriage, the family, and the community; production and reinforcement of citizenship; attitudes towards race; the frontier as reality and myth; and process and meaning of art making. The exhibition is arranged in four chronological sections. The first — Inventing American Stories, 1765–1830— begins with artists who told stories through portraits. Serving their sitters' self-conscious interest in how they appeared in the eyes of others, American portraitists often emulated British compositions. Although these artists focused on individuals and particular locales and relationships, the cleverest of them responded to broader narrative agendas and to the natural impulse to tell stories. In his portrait of his colleague Paul Revere (1768, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), John Singleton Copley embedded subtle narrative into a traditional single-figure format, with the silversmith's gestures and gaze conveying volumes about the time in which he lived. As their patrons learned to read portraits for more than likeness and to appreciate artistic license, portraitists began to gratify their sitters by telling subtle personal stories in increasingly elaborate compositions. In his ingenious double-likeness of Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming (1788, National Gallery of Art, Washington), for instance, Charles Willson Peale implied the sexual bond that defined the Lamings' marriage. Later in this period, some painters told grand stories in pictures produced for public exhibition, rather than purely for private enjoyment. In Gallery of the Louvre (1831–33, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago), Samuel F. B. Morse proposed that his compatriots must achieve cultural independence from Europe even while they learned from the Old World's greatest artistic achievements. In the second section of the exhibition — Stories for the Public, 1830–1860— American artists responded to an expanding and increasingly diverse audience for public exhibitions; new mechanisms for selling and reproducing art; and middle-class patrons' growing cultural literacy and wealth. They almost invariably looked to precedents in European genre painting to help them tell their stories, drawing inspiration from Old Master Dutch or more recent French and English examples, known through popular prints. Genre painters preferred domestic scenes, lighthearted narratives, clear settings, stereotyped characters, and obvious gestures and details so that viewers could read their pictorial dramas easily and recognize themselves in relation to them. Many American genre painters favored rural locales, which were associated with fundamental national values. In The City and Country Beaux (ca. 1838-40, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown), Francis William Edmonds suggested the virtues and vices of each locale as a young woman chooses between a slick Yankee and a self-satisfied country bumpkin. Painters in this era gently confronted the deepening rifts between the races, immigrants and native workers, and geographical divisions between north and south, east and west. For example, William Sidney Mount commented on race in a rural context in The Power of Music (1847, Cleveland Museum of Art), which shows a black man set apart from white listeners and yet enjoying the sound of the fiddle played by a young white man. In a similarly euphemistic vein, Missouri-born George Caleb Bingham tamed for eastern viewers the perceived perils of foreign types and the frontier in Fur Traders Descending the Missouri (1845, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The third section of the exhibition is Stories of War and Reconciliation, 1860–1877. Fought mainly by non-professional soldiers, the Civil War was essentially democratic, as Winslow Homer implied in his paintings of daily life at the front, including Pitching Quoits (1865, Harvard University Art Museums). To assuage the sorrow provoked by the war and to heal the nation's fractured spirit, painters in this period turned away from political content toward domestic and leisure-time subjects. As women gained prominence after the loss of so many men in the war, artists portrayed them in new roles. Homer's Croquet Scene (1866, The Art Institute of Chicago), for example, shows women competing with men on a literally level playing field and celebrates the nation's return to peaceful pursuits. Expressing nostalgia for pre-war innocence, many artists portrayed children, including Seymour Joseph Guy, whose Making a Train (1867, Philadelphia Museum of Art) epitomizes the impulse. And, as the agrarian basis of American life gave way to urbanization and industrialization, artists who were themselves working in thriving cities manifested the longing for earlier, simpler times in their nostalgic depictions of rural activities. In The New Bonnet (1876, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), painted in the year of the Centennial, Eastman Johnson evokes a quiet moment as two women scrutinize a hat while their father warms his hands by the fire in an old-fashioned Nantucket interior. By the mid-1870s, the nation's visual culture burgeoned and the taste of American viewers and patrons matured in response to expanded opportunities for travel; access to more and better graphic reproductions of paintings; and exposure to art in newly founded museums. American painters yielded to an unprecedented internationalism, embracing new stories and new means by which to tell them. In Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877-1915, the exhibition's fourth and final section, American artists redefined national identity in an international context. They were as likely to paint people in Paris or the French countryside as in New York or New England. They revealed in their works an appreciation of the journalistic, fragmented narrative that inflected foreign examples, and they evaded even more than their predecessors the harsh realities of modern existence. American painters also operated in a newly complex art world, which broadened their opportunities for displaying and marketing art on both sides of the Atlantic and altered their professional standards. Paris resident Mary Cassatt told of the daily routine of sophisticated urban women and indicated her own appreciation of female empowerment in Woman and a Girl Driving (1881, Philadelphia Museum of Art). John Singer Sargent, also an expatriate, frankly recorded an encounter with ordinary Venetians in A Street in Venice (ca. 1880-82) and a visit to a well-to-do American family in An Interior in Venice (1899, Royal Academy of Arts, London). William Merritt Chase escaped from the city to a tranquil suburban retreat in Idle Hours (ca. 1894, Amon Carter Museum), depicting fashionable figures relaxing on a placid greensward along a beach in Southampton, Long Island, and in Ring Toss (1896, Marie and Hugh Halff) showed three of his daughters at play in his nearby summer studio. Some painters examined men at work and leisure and celebrated new heroes such as cowboys, who became emblems of American masculinity and the receding frontier. Thomas Anshutz's Ironworkers' Noontime (1880, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco), Thomas Eakins's Swimming (1885, Amon Carter Museum), and Frederic Remington's Fight for the Water Hole (1903, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) are key examples. The Ashcan artists, who challenged American Impressionist decorum after 1900, were committed to recording the modern world frankly and to grappling with gritty urban realities. Yet, John Sloan typically retained the Impressionists' cheerful outlook in The Picnic Grounds (1906-7, Whitney Museum of American Art), even though he depicted indecorous working-class girls in a park in Bayonne, New Jersey. Sloan's Ashcan associates invited viewers to experience other distinctive, even sordid urban venues. In Club Night (1907, National Gallery of Art, Washington), George Bellows provided ringside seats at a brutal boxing match, which women, who could have seen the painting, could not actually have attended. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. It was edited by H. Barbara Weinberg (Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture) and Carrie Rebora Barratt (Associate Director for Collections and Administration), both of the Metropolitan Museum. It includes essays by Weinberg and Barratt, as well as by Bruce Robertson (Professor of Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Consulting Curator, Department of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Margaret C. Conrads (Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City). Published by the Metropolitan Museum and distributed by Yale University Press, the book is suitable for non-specialists as well as scholars, and are available in the Museum's bookshops ($60 hardcover, $40 paperback). The catalogue is made possible by The William Cullen Bryant Fellows of the American Wing. The exhibition is organized by H. Barbara Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Carrie Rebora Barratt, Associate Director for Collections and Administration, both of the Metropolitan Museum, in association with Bruce Robertson, Professor of Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Consulting Curator, Department of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Margaret C. Conrads, Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, also contributed to the planning of the exhibition. Exhibition design is by Michael Batista, Exhibition Design Manager; graphics are by Constance Norkin, Senior Graphic Designer; and lighting is by Clint Ross Coller and Richard Lichte, Lighting Design Managers, all of the Metropolitan Museum's Design Department.
Charles Cromwell Ingham (American, 1796-1863), The Flower Girl, 1846, Oil on canvas; 36 x 28 7/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of William Church Osborn, 1902 (02.7.1), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Henry Bacon (American, 1839-1912), First Sight of Land, 1877, Oil on canvas; 28-3/4 x 19-7/8", In the collection of Art and Elaine Baur. |
Winslow Homer (American, 1836-1910), The Gulf Stream, 1899, Oil on canvas; 28-1/8 x 49-1/8", The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1906 (06.1234), Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. |
William Merritt Chase (American, 1849-1916), Ring Toss, 1896, Oil on canvas; 40-3/8 x 35-1/8", Marie and Hugh Halff. |
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