Estampes Japonaises: Images d’un Monde Éphémère

Each year my husband and I spend the week before Christmas in France, in Lille. This year we took a day out and travelled by TGV to Paris, to view the exhibition Estampes Japonaises: Images d’un Monde Éphémère at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The exhibition, which is accompanied by a beautifully produced hardback catalogue, is one not to be missed and includes rare and well-known works by Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige, Harunobu and Sharaku, amongst others. The exhibition is housed within the Galerie Mazarine and the Crypte, with the latter location being home to all of the Hokusai and Hiroshige designs on display. Included amongst the works on display are Utamaro’s famous portrait of Takashima Ohisa (which is illustrated on the catalogue’s cover), The Fancy-free Type from the series Ten Physiognomic Studies of Women, and the portrait of the star-crossed lovers Koharu and Jihei, commonly referred to as La Sortie, from An Array of Passionate Lovers. Also included in the exhibition are fourteen sheets from Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, including the artist’s most well-known design, Great Wave off Kanagawa.

One of my favourite designs from the exhibition is a triptych by Utagawa Toyokuni showing the interior of the famous Nakamura-za Kabuki theatre in Edo. Whilst three actors are performing on stage, with musical accompaniment being provided by five musicians seated behind them, the men and women who have come to see the show are engaged in all manner of activities around the theatre. There are people from all ranks of society, eating and drinking, smoking their pipes, engaging in lively conversation, and towards the rear of the left-hand sheet there are even men having a rough and tumble. There is so much life in the incredibly humorous design, and so much to occupy the eye, that I could have stood there all day looking at it.

The exhibition is on until February 15th, 2009.