In its Final Days: “Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism,” Legion of Honor, San Francisco.

Left: Hiroshige, Gion Shrine in the Snow (Gionsha setchu), from the series Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi), ca. 1833–1834. Right: Henri Riviere, La Tour en construction, vue de Trocadero, pl. 3 from the book Les Trente-Six Vues de la Tour Eiffel, 1902. Color lithograph © 2010 ARS, New York / ADAGP, Paris

“Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism” at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor closes this Sunday.  The show consists of roughly 250 prints, drawings, and artists’ books that trace the development of the Japanese print over two centuries (1700–1900) and reveal Japanesque’s profound influence on Western art during the era of Impressionism.  Most of the works are from the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts which is the works on paper department of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FMASF).  See this show now, because it’s likely you won’t see these prints together again for at least 20 years according to exhibition curator Karin Breuer.  The long interval between exhibits is necessary to preserve the prints as prolonged exposure to light will cause fading.  The lighting in the show is subdued but more than adequate to view the prints.  Each print in the show is being tracked to monitor how long it is out of its archival box and exposed to light.  The show complements “Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay,” at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, through January 18, 2011. Many of the paintings from the Musée d’Orsay are aesthetically indebted to concepts of Japanese art.

Japanesque unfolds in three sections: Evolution, Essence and Influence.

Evolution: Evolution presents a chronological development of the Japanese print in Edo (presentday Tokyo), beginning with early black-and-white woodcuts and handcolored woodcuts. They are followed by delicate three- and four-color prints by early masters of ukiyo-e such as Suzuki Harunobu and Kitagawa Utamaro that feature the courtesans and beauties of the “floating world.” Landscape prints from the 1830s by Katsushika Hokusai and Ando Hiroshige are shown as examples of that important Japanese genre.

Essence:  The Essence section features the Japanese aesthetic in print, and particularly highlights those subjects and compositional concepts that Western artists admired and imitated.  Iconic images such as Hokusai’s The Great Wave and Fuji above the Lightning from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1831–1834) are shown here, as well as Hiroshige’s Plum Orchard from his famous series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1857).

Influence:  A large group of works by European and American artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras who were influenced by the Japanese print includes prints and drawings by Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.  The artists collected Japanese prints and often produced their own graphic work that, in composition, color, and imagery borrowed directly from the Japanese aesthetic.  Henri Rivière’s homage to Hokusai Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower (1902) is featured, as well as the work of American artists such as Arthur Wesley Dow and Helen Hyde, who traveled to Japan to enhance their knowledge of the Japanese color woodcut.

Artist Studio featuring the Craft of the Color Woodcut:  Color woodcut techniques developed by the Japanese and adopted by Western artists are featured in a special education gallery within the exhibition. The “artist studio” includes woodblocks, tools, preparatory drawings, and progressive color prints that demonstrate the process of designing, carving, and printing color woodcuts.

Details: The Legion of Honor Museum is located in Lincoln Park, 34th Avenue and Clement Street, San Francisco. For information, visit http://www.legionofhonor.org  or call (415) 750-3600.

Tickets to “Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond” at the de Young are good for same-day admission to “Japanesque” at the Legion of Honor.