Japanese Garden (Japan)

Notwithstanding the title Japanese Garden (Japan) which has been attached to this work at least since 1915, Lilla Cabot Perry’s painting shows a view in a Japanese cemetery. Tall stone pillars, their square bases green with moss, mark the sites of family plots where the cremated ashes of the deceased are buried below ground; a tall lantern anchors the composition at left. Dappled light spills across the foreground of a composition dominated by glowing greens. Beyond, a line of trees along the diagonal ridge partly screens the view of waterlogged terraced rice plots in the distance.

Beginning in 1898 Perry spent three years in Japan when her husband, Thomas Sargeant Perry, a scholar of English literature, taught at Keio Philanthropic School (now Keio University) in Tokyo. Thomas Perry was a grand-nephew of Commodore Matthew C. Perry, famous for forcing Japan to open to trade with the West in 1853. During their time in Tokyo, Lilla Perry expanded her knowledge of Japanese woodblock prints and incorporated Japanese themes into numerous figural works, many showing traditional dress and interiors, as well as in landscape paintings that reflect the Perrys’ frequent travels outside Tokyo. In contrast to her many views of Mount Fuji, Japanese Garden (Japan) is an intimate glimpse of a traditional Japanese cemetary. By painting this sacred site, usually reserved for the families of the deceased, Perry demonstrated her fascination with the antiquity of Japanese traditional culture. The 1890s saw a movement in Japan to preserve time-honored customs under threat from modern ways and technology, and Perry was acquainted with some of its leading figures.

In the previous decade, Perry made several long stays in the artists’ colony in the rural French village of Giverny, where she came under the influence of impressionism, the use of distinct strokes of bright color to capture natural light and atmosphere. She helped introduce impressionism to Japanese artists during her time in Tokyo through a solo exhibition there in 1898, through her honorary membership in the Nippon Bijutsu-in Art Association. Japanese Garden (Japan) is one of her most convincingly impressionist works. Its tactile brushwork and fresh, seemingly unedited view of its humble subject are evidence that Perry painted it on-site, applying paint rapidly and directly to the canvas in the impressionist manner, rather than in the studio from drawings according to the traditional practice in which she had trained.

American Impressionism, Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (organizer). Venues: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, January 3–March 3, 1980; Frederick S. Wight Gallery, University of California, Los Angeles, California, March 9–May 4, 1980; Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 16–June 22, 1980; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts, July 1–August 31, 1980. [exh. cat.]

America's Impressionists, Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, North Carolina, March 14–May 25, 1986. [exh. cat.]

Ideals from the East: The Japanese Taste in Middle America, 1868–1918, South Bend Regional Museum of Art, South Bend, Indiana, December 11, 1994–January 29, 1995.

Gerdts, William H. American Impressionism. (exh. cat., Henry Art Gallery). Seattle, Washington: Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, 1980. Text p. 134 (checklist); ill. p. 149 (black & white).

Master American Impressionists. (exh. cat., Marietta/Cobb Fine Arts Center). Marietta, Georgia: Marietta/Cobb Fine Arts Center, 1983. Text p. 5; pl. 17, p. 5 (black & white).

Gerdts, William H. American Impressionism. New York: Abbeville Press, 1984. Pl. 92, p. 89 (color).

American Paintings III. New York: Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., 1985. Text p. 81; ill. p. 81 (color).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Lasting Impressions: American Painters in France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 60; fig. 53, p. 60 (black & white).

Gerdts, William H. et al. Impressions de toujours: les peintres américains en France, 1865–1915. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 1992. Text p. 60; fig. 53, p. 60 (black & white).

Gomes, Rosalie. Impressions of Giverny: A Painter's Paradise 1883–1914. San Francisco, California: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995. Text p. 115; pl. 50, p. 81 (color).