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The Fitting
Artist / Origin: Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926)
Region: Europe
Date: 1890–91
Period: 1800 CE – 1900 CE
Material: Drypoint and aquatint etching on off-white, moderately thick, moderately textured laid paper
Medium: Prints, Drawings, and Photography
Dimensions: (Image) H: 14 13/16 in. (37.6 cm.), W: 10 1/8 in. (25.7 cm.); (Sheet) H: 17 ¼ in. (43.8 cm.), W: 12 in. (30.5 cm.)
Location: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York
Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum
Chûbon no zu (Picture of the Middle Class)
Artist / Origin: Kitagawa Utamaro (Japanese, 1753–1806)
Region: East Asia
Date: Edo period, ca. 1794–95
Period: 1400 CE – 1800 CE
Material: Oban woodcut
Medium: Prints, Drawings, and Photography
Dimensions: H: 14 1/5 in. (36.3 cm.), W: 10 in. (25.3 cm.)
Location: Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art. Prints and Photographs. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. The New York Public Library, New York, New York
Credit: Courtesy of the New York Public Library/Art Resource, NY
After Japan opened up to trade and political relations with the wider world after the mid-nineteenth century, cultural exchange with the West boomed. Japanese prints, in particular, were greeted avidly by European and American audiences and artists alike. But this was not the first time artistic ideas were traded between East and West. The very Japanese prints that so fascinated viewers in France, England, and the U.S. were themselves influenced to varying degrees by Western aesthetics.