Hokusai cover of Le Japon Artistique

The Far East has long fired the imaginations of artists. For centuries knowledge of the lands of the Orient was fragmentary and over time these places acquired a veneer of exotic mystery which attracted explorers and merchants. Eventually artists began to draw on the whatever information trickled back from the Orient as an inspiration to their work. Though many of these attempts to transmit the exotic are simply quaint exercises in superficial japonisme or chinoiserie, their influence can still be felt in the works they left behind.