Au café-concert
Adolphe Albert
French (1853-1938)
Au café-concert
Woodcut
Robert S. and Naomi C. Dennison Fund for Acquisition, 2009.11
Poet and Nymphs
Josef Váchal
Czech (1884-1969)
Poet and Nymphs (c. 1910)
Color woodcut
Alumni Annual Giving Program, 1980.17
Der Polster [The Cushion]
Maximilian Kurzweil
Austrian (1867-1916)
Der Polster [The Cushion] (1903)
Color woodcut on Japan paper
Gift of Theodore B. Donson, 1983.15
Japanese woodblock prints had a profound impact on European artists in the decades following the resumption of trade between Japan and the West in the 1850s. The prints’ high degree of stylization, flatness, and vivid color appealed to artists in search of alternatives to the conventions of European academic art, which valued verisimilitude in representation of the visible world.
The influence of Japanese art is apparent not only in the decorative quality of Maximilian Kurzweil’s woodcut. An Austrian painter and printmaker, he made the print with Japan paper, a term used to describe high quality, handmade paper originally made in Japan from mulberry bark and other fibers.