UKIYO-E: portraits

Geisha dancing in a button blanket?

Utamaro: Reading Letter

In 1853 Commodore Perry forcefully opened Japan to foreign trade. As a result travelers and goods flowed between Japan, Europe, and USA at an unprecedented rate. The inexpensive common ukiyo-e woodblock prints were liberally used as recycled packing materials and by 1867 were being enthusiastically collected, traded and exhibited throughout Europe. By 1873 this momentous arrival of the simple but sophisticated ukiyo-e had a profound impact on the impressionist and post-impressionist painters influencing the course of modern western art with a new found interest in "Japonisme" employing bold graphic designs with flat areas of colour, unique perspective, asymmetrical compositional arrangements and stylized use patterns and outlines.
http://www.cummer.org/programs-events/calendar-of-events/beyond-ukiyo-e-japanese-woodblock-prints-and-their-influence-west

Some of those influenced by Japanese art include: artists Arthur Wesley Dow, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir, James McNeill Whistler (Rose and silver: La princesse du pays de porcelaine, 1863–64), Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Bertha Lum, William Bradley, Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, and the sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonism