Japonisme Painting. Japonism is the study of Japanese art and artistic talent. Japonism affected fine arts, sculpture, architecture, performing arts and decorative arts throughout Western culture. The term is used particularly to refer to Japanese influence on European art, especially in impressionism. Japonism was first described by French art critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872. From the 1860s, ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints, became a source of inspiration for many Western artists. Ukiyo-e began as a Japanese painting school developed in the 17th century. Ukiyo-e woodblock prints were created to fit a demand for inexpensive, souvenir images. Although the prints were inexpensive, they were innovative and technical which gave each one value. These prints were rarely created with a single patron in mind, rather they were created for the commercial market in Japan. Although a percentage of prints were brought to the West through Dutch trade merchants, it was not until the 1860s that ukiyo-e prints gained popularity in Europe. Western artists were intrigued by the original use of color and composition. Ukiyo-e prints featured dramatic foreshortening and asymmetrical compositions. During the Edo period, Japan was in a period of seclusion and only one international port remained active. Tokugawa Iemitsu ordered that an island, Dejima, be built off the shores of Nagasaki from which Japan could receive imports. The Dutch were the only country able to engage in trade with the Japanese, however, this small amount of contact still allowed for Japanese art to influence the West. Every year the Dutch arrived in Japan with fleets of ships filled with Western goods for trade. In the cargoes arrived many Dutch treatises on painting and a number of Dutch prints. Shiba Kokan was one of the notable Japanese artists that studied the Dutch imports. Kokan created one of the first etchings in Japan which was a technique he had learned from one of the imported treatises. Kokan would combine the technique of linear perspective, which he learned from a treatise, with his own ukiyo-e styled paintings. Through the seclusion era, Japanese goods remained a sought after luxury by European monarchs. Japanese porcelain manufacturing began in the seventeenth century after Korean potters settled in Kyusyu area. They unearthed kaolin clay near Nagasaki and began to make high quality pottery. Japanese manufacturers were aware of the popularity of porcelain in Europe, therefore, some products were specifically produced for the Dutch trade. Porcelain and lacquerware became the main exports from Japan to Europe. Porcelain was used to decorate the homes of monarchs in the Baroque and Rococo style. A popular way to display porcelain in a home was to create a porcelain room. Shelves would be placed throughout the room to display the exotic decorations. During the Kaei era, after more than 200 years of seclusion, foreign merchant ships of various nationalities began to visit Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan ended a long period of national isolation and became open to imports from the West, including photography and printing techniques. With this new opening in trade, Japanese art and artifacts began to appear in small curiosity shops in Paris and London. Japonism began as a craze for collecting Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e. Some of the first samples of ukiyo-e were to be seen in Paris. In about 1856 the French artist Felix Bracquemond first came across a copy of the sketch book Hokusai Manga at the workshop of his printer, Auguste Deletre.