Caleb Shelburne: Promenades Japonaises and French Orientalism

Émile Guimet (1836-1918) was a prominent art collector, scholar, and author in France in the 1870s and 1880s. His father, a prominent industrialist, had left him an immense fortune which he spent on traveling around the world to record others’ lifestyles and bring back examples of local fine arts to France. He first traveled in the early 1860s, visiting Germany, Eastern Europe, and North Africa, and this was when he started his tradition of publishing works about his experiences: a popular book entitled Sketches of Egypt: The Journal of A Tourist, which sold well in France and provided factual material for later scholarly endeavors. In 1876 he traveled to several East Asian countries, most notably Japan, before returning to France. The French government had offered him a grant if he would write a book on the “religions of the Orient” based on his work in Egypt, and Guimet leapt at the opportunity. In this book, Promenades Japonaises, which not only describes the “religion” of Japan (especially the complex relationship between Shinto and Buddhism), is a remarkable collection of first-person anecdotes, traditional folklore (including the tale of the 47 Rōnin), and factual information on the political and religious customs and history of Japan.

In order to best capture Japan in his book, Guimet brought Felix Regamey (1844-1907), a painter, along with him for illustrations. Regamey, a well-established artist who had been previously been published mostly in newspapers and magazines, used the trip as an opportunity to study Japanese art, particularly the use of watercolors. Because the trip was officially sponsored, the artwork was also expected to be factually accurate, so Regamey’s drawings can be considered far less fanciful than much of the Western art depicting Japanese subjects from the time. However, as an artist who had begun his career in caricature and who came from a developed Western nation, elements of euro-centrism, racism, and orientalism can be identified in his work.

 

Bibliography:

Guimet, Émile, Promenades Japonaises (Paris: 1880). http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6581625t/f1.image.

Librizzi, Jane, “Felix Regamey Goes To Japan,” The Blue Lantern, May 24, 2009, http://thebluelantern.blogspot.com/2009/05/felix-regemay-goes-to-japan.html.

Macouin, Francis. “Émile Guimet, fondateur du musée,” Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, http://www.guimet.fr/fr/musee-guimet/emile-guimet-fondateur-du-musee.