KAMEIDO || Christa Zaat

Christa Zaat



Vincent van Gogh (Dutch painter) 1853 - 1890
Bloeiende Pruimenboomgaard in Kameido (naar Hiroshige) (The Plum Garden in Kameido(after Hiroshige)), 1887
oil on canvas
55 x 46 cm. (21.7 x 18.1 in.)
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Van Gogh made this painting after a Japanese print by Hiroshige from the extensive collection he shared with his brother. He closely followed the composition of Hiroshige, but did not stick to the exact colours of the original. The Oriental characters he painted on the frame were derived from a Japanese example. The text they create has no coherent meaning and their function is primarily decorative.
The ancient plum tree that was the subject of the original print by Hiroshige had the poetic nickname of 'the sleeping dragon plum tree'. A name it got from the way that the tree branched out via a network of underground roots only to emerge above ground somewhere else.

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Japonaiserie (English: Japanesery) was the term the Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh used to express the influence of Japanese art.

Before 1854 trade with Japan was confined to a Dutch monopoly and Japanese goods imported into Europe were for the most part confined to porcelain and lacquer ware. The Convention of Kanagawa put an end to the 200 year old Japanese foreign policy of Seclusion and opened up trade between Japan and the West.
Artists such as Manet, Degas and Monet, followed by Van Gogh, began to collect the cheap colour wood-block prints called ukiyo-e prints. For a while Vincent and his brother Theo dealt in these prints and they eventually amassed hundreds of them (now housed in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).

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Utagawa Hiroshige (aka Andō Hiroshige) (Japanese ukiyo-e artist) 1797 - 1858
Hiroshige is best known for his landscapes and for his depictions of birds and flowers. The subjects of his work were atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose typical focus was on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868).
Ukiyo-e, or ukiyo-ye ("pictures of the floating world"), is a genre of woodblock prints and paintings that flourished in Japan from the 17th through 19th centuries.

Hiroshige’s The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–1834) and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–1858) greatly influenced French Impressionists such as Monet. Vincent Van Gogh copied two of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo which were among his collection of ukiyo-e prints.