Ukiyo-e Masterpieces in European Collections

Ukiyo-e, Japanese woodblock prints and paintings, have been highly revered in Europe since at least the mid-19th century. The older collections came to Europe via the Dutch trading base at Dejima, Nagasaki and the 1867 Paris exhibition created great interest in Japan. Ukiyo-e became appreciated for combining the skills of artist, engraver and printer, a co-operative effort of consummate skill unparalleled elsewhere in the world. They had considerable influence on European art, and in particular on the compositional technique of Whistler, Manet, Degas and Van Gogh. A major result of this vogue for ukiyo-e in the 19th century was that many of the outstanding prints surviving in Japan disappeared to re-emerge in the West. Europe came to have at least as many ukiyo-e prints as Japan. By the turn of the century a number began to head across the Pacific to the United States, but the European collections remain the oldest, the most interesting and unsurpassed in quality. This publishing project aims to catalogue the outstanding collections of seven major European museums in 12 volumes.
Not only will it help the Japanese rediscover their artistic heritage, but it will almost certainly become the standard reference work on the subject for scholars, collectors and the museums themselves. Over 90 per cent of the material has not been published before. Each volume has a total of 250 colour illustrations of which 80 are full-page reproductions of rare or important prints. Other significant collections of ukiyo-e have not been overlooked. They are surveyed in detail in an appendix which serves as a compendium of ukiyo-e in Europe.