Like many of his contemporaries, Whistler showed great interest in Japanese culture. It became a real revelation for the then public, causing a lot of imitations and interpretations. The first exhibitions of Japanese graphics took place in Paris in the mid 1850s, after which numerous “oriental” benches appeared in the city.
After the international exhibition in 1862, which was held in London, fashion for Japanese art embraced and England. The influence exerted by Japanese graphics on the work of artists of the second half of the XIX century was enormous. In order to appreciate the eastern culture, Whistler took some time.
At first, in his paintings painted in a purely Western manner, certain eastern details began to appear, but already at the end of the 1860s the artist began to write scenes in which the cultural traditions of the East and the West were organically combined. Among them are such works as “Sea, Beach and Shapes” and “Symphony in Blue and Pink”, 1868 from the series “Six Objects”. Some elements of Japanese graphics can be found in the works of his series “Nocturnes.”
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