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By the early 1860s, after the forced opening of Japan to trade in the previous decade, Japanese art, textiles, and decorative objects proliferated in Europe. Many artists (including Monet) were profoundly influenced by the items and ideas they encountered: a complex combination of appropriation and admiration for Japanese culture known as Japonisme.
Monet’s large-scale painting La Japonaise portrays his wife Camille posed dramatically in a kimono with a padded hem (uchkake). While we do not know his specific intentions wit this subject, Monet appears to highlight the artificiality of Japonisme. In a setting marked by over-the-top Japanese-style decoration, Camille wears a blonde wig while “cheerily laying the role of the costume,” as one contemporary critic described. Collaboration between MFA staff and colleagues in Japan revealed the subject of the robe’s dynamic decoration: a Japanese fable about leaf-peeping samurai and a beautiful woman who is a demon in disguise.
La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume)
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
1876
Medium/Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
231.8 x 142.3 cm (91 1/4 x 56 in.)
Credit Line
1951 Purchase Fund
Accession Number56.147
CollectionsEurope
ClassificationsPaintings
By the early 1860s, after the forced opening of Japan to trade in the previous decade, Japanese art, textiles, and decorative objects proliferated in Europe. Many artists (including Monet) were profoundly influenced by the items and ideas they encountered: a complex combination of appropriation and admiration for Japanese culture known as Japonisme.
Monet’s large-scale painting La Japonaise portrays his wife Camille posed dramatically in a kimono with a padded hem (uchkake). While we do not know his specific intentions wit this subject, Monet appears to highlight the artificiality of Japonisme. In a setting marked by over-the-top Japanese-style decoration, Camille wears a blonde wig while “cheerily laying the role of the costume,” as one contemporary critic described. Collaboration between MFA staff and colleagues in Japan revealed the subject of the robe’s dynamic decoration: a Japanese fable about leaf-peeping samurai and a beautiful woman who is a demon in disguise.
InscriptionsLower left: Claude Monet 1876
ProvenanceApril 14, 1876, Monet and Ernest Hoschedé sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 37 [see note 1]. April 19, 1877, anonymous ("L.") sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, lot 48, to Constantin de Rasty (d. 1923), Paris; 1918, sold by Rasty to Paul Rosenberg and Co., Paris and New York [see note 2]; 1920, sold by Rosenberg to Philip Lehman (b. 1861 - d. 1947), New York [see note 3]; 1921, sold by Lehman to Duveen Brothers, Inc., London [see note 4]; 1937, shipped from Duveen, London to Duveen, New York; 1956, sold by Duveen to the MFA for $45,000. (Accession Date: March 8, 1956)
NOTES:
[1] Traditionally referred to as Monet's sale, the auction was organized by Ernest Hoschedé (b. 1837 - d. 1891) and included several works belonging to him, leading Hélène Adhemar ("Ernest Hoschedé," in Aspects of Monet: A Symposium on the Artist's Life and Times, ed. John Rewald and Frances Weitzenhoffer [New York: Abrams, 1984], p. 61) to suggest it was a joint sale and Hoschedé "was without a doubt in possession of the Monet paintings" ("il était sans doute en possession des tableaux de Monet"). When the painting was acquired, Edward Fowles of Duveen Brothers stated that "it was originally in the collection of a Mr. Hoschede" (letter to W. G. Constable, MFA, February 16, 1956).
[2] René Gimpel noted on August 10, 1918, that the dealer Georges Bernheim informed him that "Rosenberg has bought a life-size Monet, a Japanese woman." See his "Diary of an Art Dealer", trans. John Rosenberg (New York, 1966), p. 55; also pp. 59 (August 19) and 67 (October 29). Monet himself wrote to Rosenberg about the painting (August 6, 1918, copy of letter in curatorial file).
[3] In the brief notice "New Monet for New York," American Art News XVIII, no. 18 (February 21, 1920): p. 1, the painting is said to have "recently been purchased by a New York collector." Edward Fowles (as above, n. 1) stated that "Philip Lehman purchased it from Paul Rosenberg."
[4] According to a memo from the London office to the Paris office of Duveen Brothers (December 31, 1926, Duveen Brothers Records, Getty Research Institute, Box 267, folder 24). The official sale date is given, in a memo to the New York branch of the gallery (December 13, 1937), as January 1, 1922.
NOTES:
[1] Traditionally referred to as Monet's sale, the auction was organized by Ernest Hoschedé (b. 1837 - d. 1891) and included several works belonging to him, leading Hélène Adhemar ("Ernest Hoschedé," in Aspects of Monet: A Symposium on the Artist's Life and Times, ed. John Rewald and Frances Weitzenhoffer [New York: Abrams, 1984], p. 61) to suggest it was a joint sale and Hoschedé "was without a doubt in possession of the Monet paintings" ("il était sans doute en possession des tableaux de Monet"). When the painting was acquired, Edward Fowles of Duveen Brothers stated that "it was originally in the collection of a Mr. Hoschede" (letter to W. G. Constable, MFA, February 16, 1956).
[2] René Gimpel noted on August 10, 1918, that the dealer Georges Bernheim informed him that "Rosenberg has bought a life-size Monet, a Japanese woman." See his "Diary of an Art Dealer", trans. John Rosenberg (New York, 1966), p. 55; also pp. 59 (August 19) and 67 (October 29). Monet himself wrote to Rosenberg about the painting (August 6, 1918, copy of letter in curatorial file).
[3] In the brief notice "New Monet for New York," American Art News XVIII, no. 18 (February 21, 1920): p. 1, the painting is said to have "recently been purchased by a New York collector." Edward Fowles (as above, n. 1) stated that "Philip Lehman purchased it from Paul Rosenberg."
[4] According to a memo from the London office to the Paris office of Duveen Brothers (December 31, 1926, Duveen Brothers Records, Getty Research Institute, Box 267, folder 24). The official sale date is given, in a memo to the New York branch of the gallery (December 13, 1937), as January 1, 1922.