Vicissitude of transcultural heritage : Oriental colours in French Impressionism

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Chi, Yumei; Sadowski, Mirosław M. and Bonaviri, Gianluigi Mastandrea and Ceccotti, Filippo, eds. (2025) Vicissitude of transcultural heritage : Oriental colours in French Impressionism. In: Heritage in War and Peace IV. University of Strathclyde Publishing, Glasgow. ISBN 9781914241802 (https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00093386)

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Abstract

This study investigates the often-overlooked presence of Chinese artistic influence in Impressionist painting, situating it within the broader context of transcultural exchange across Asia and Europe. This article reconsiders the development of French Impressionism through the lens of transcultural exchange, arguing that Chinese painting traditions—largely mediated through Japan—played a significant, though frequently unacknowledged, role in shaping its aesthetic evolution. While 19th-century Impressionist painters such as Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh openly referenced Japanese ukiyo-e prints, this study traces those influences further back to the Chinese Literati and Imperial (court) Painting of the Song dynasty, particularly the Southern Song’s Ma-Xia school. These Chinese visual traditions entered Japan via the Kanō and Nanpin schools and were subsequently absorbed into ukiyo-e, forming a layered genealogy of influence. Drawing on historical analyses of trade routes—particularly the vibrant commercial activity along the Maritime Silk Routes from the 9th to the 16th century, the rich and cosmopolitan exchanges they facilitated between China and the Middle East, and the increasingly globalised trade networks of the 16th to 19th centuries, marked by the rise of European maritime powers and the later emergence of various East India companies—this article situates artistic exchange within the broader dynamics preceding and shaping early globalization. It further examines how Chinoiserie (Chinese-like), cultivated under the reign of Louis XIV through Jesuit missions to China and embodied in the work of Jean-Antoine Watteau, laid aesthetic foundations that would later resonate in Impressionist practices. By foregrounding the often-overlooked Chinese origins underlying what has commonly been framed as Japonisme, this study challenges linear narratives of Asia-to-Europe influence. Instead, it proposes a more nuanced model of reciprocal, transhistorical artistic exchange—revealing that the emergence of Impressionism was shaped by a complex, multilayered process of transmission and reinvention, with Chinese painting traditions occupying a fundamental, though frequently unacknowledged, role in the process of influence.

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