left: Keisai Eisen, Courtesan, c. 1820s, color woodblock print, Private Collection, New York right: Vincent van Gogh, The Courtesan, copy after Keisai Eisen, summer/autumn 1887, oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Japanese prints took the Parisian art world by storm beginning in the 1860s. A large exhibition of Japanese art had been shown at the World's Fair in Paris in 1867, the first time many Western artists had had the chance to see these works. Like many of his contemporaries, Van Gogh was captivated by Japanese art, and he and Theo collected hundreds of Japanese prints.

In Japanese prints Van Gogh found another approach to creating art, including an entirely new vantage point and different compositional strategy. For example, Japanese compositions are often asymmetrical and cropped, as seen here both in the print of a courtesan by Keisai Eisen and in Van Gogh's version of the print, The Courtesan, which he painted in the summer and autumn of 1887. The figure is cropped at the right in the painting (and at the left in the print). There is a new emphasis on pattern and the interplay of light and dark, and Van Gogh is moving away from dashes and dots to large areas of vibrant color. He was especially drawn to these aspects of other Japanese prints: their bold, daring colors and their dynamic juxtaposition of form and color.

By studying Japanese prints, Van Gogh became fascinated with color and its expressive potential. He began to understand pure color as a powerful conduit of emotion. His painting of The Courtesan offers a feast of color -- rich yellow ocher (later one of his favorite hues), with vivid blues, greens, and reds, and the ghostly white of the courtesan's face. He used high-key, saturated colors, juxtaposing them to enhance their effect.

It is not clear if Van Gogh knew Keisai Eisen's print in its original form, but the image was widely circulated in reproduction, including the May 1886 cover of the well-known journal Paris Illustré. In any case, his copy departs from the original in significant ways. He has intensified the colors, introducing bright red and green and yellow in place of the pastel blues and coral tones of the print. And although he places the figure within a frame that echoes the edges of the print, he creates an imaginative border around it depicting a pond. He plays with Japanese motifs such as the bamboo on the right, the frog in the foreground, and the cranes in the background. Van Gogh integrates oriental motifs into his art in addition to adapting Japanese composition and patterning, but his personal vision transforms the source of inspiration.

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