(Check out this article’s corresponding playlist, featuring Impressionist work juxtaposed with their ukiyo-e inspiration.)

One of the most traditional exercises for art students is what is known as a ‘master’s copy’—literally copying the work of a master. The goal is to absorb the techniques and approaches of the original painter by creating a duplicate. In 1887, Van Gogh put himself through such an exercise, making copies of multiple works by Hiroshige, the Ukiyo-e printmaster, including versions of Plum Park in Kameido, and Sudden Shower Over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake.

These reproductions make clear something less immediately obvious in his other works: how deeply influenced the painter and his contemporaries were by Japanese artistic tradition. The works of Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Mary Cassatt are often heralded as an innovative departure from the art that came before; in fact, their new styles had roots in centuries-old Japanese tradition. This is in part because, in the last few decades of the 19th century, Japonisme swept through Europe—especially France and England. Japanese goods stores opened, and magazines featuring Japanese Art flew of the shelves; one such periodical, Artistic Japan, was published in English, French, and German. Soon after came exhibitions dedicated to ukiyo-e, including one at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, which Mary Cassatt attended. Van Gogh and many of his contemporaries collected Ukiyo-e prints. Monet, in particular, had an extensive collection: 231 Japanese works were kept in his home in Giverny.

“Ukiyo-e” (which translates to “pictures of the floating world”) prints are made by engraving a single image onto multiple blocks of wood, each one corresponding to a color in the print. This method lends itself to expansive fields of color, and the use of contour lines to outline figures. Pictorially, this creates flatness rather than depth of field, and puts the artist’s focus on expressive line and color, rather than on realistic shading and fine detail. Ukiyo-e galvanized European artists in disparate ways. Degas and Cassatt (and Whistler even) might have taken notice of a certain ephemerality. Pissarro could have lifted some of his intuition on perspective. Monet’s natural compositions are tempting to trace back as well.

Japonisme’s growing popularity had a large impact not only on the style of work being made in Europe, but on the subject matter as well. Simplified landscapes, aerial views, and scenes of everyday life became increasingly popular amongst artists. A common theme used in Ukiyo-e prints was the figure of the courtesan—this can be seen echoed in Degas’s dancers and Toulouse-Lautrec’s women of the Moulin Rouge.

It is both ironic and expected that, while Western art was taking cues from Japan, Japanese art was working off of Western tradition. In 1868, with the Meiji Restoration and the dissolution of the Shogunate, foreign influence became more feasible. Suddenly, Japanese painting was caught in a dichotomy of values, between tradition and the assimilation (and, as was often the case, duplication) of European technique.

That such prominent Western artists found inspiration in ukiyo-e goes against the grain of the more typical narrative—that of European art as a self-contained progression. If anything, amateur art-viewers are led to believe that for the past millenia, influence has moved from Europe outward. But by ignoring the elements of Ukiyo-e style found in Western art, we are misunderstanding the artistic values of some of the canon’s most celebrated artists. In no small way did Ukiyo-e pave the way for modern art as we know it.