page_title: Lilla Cabot Perry
section_title: Japan
hierarchical_section_title: Lilla Cabot Perry / Career / Japan
caption_attribution_description: English: Lilla Cabot Perry, In a Japanese Garden, 1898-1901
context_page_description: Lilla Cabot Perry was an American artist who worked in the American Impressionist style, rendering portraits and landscapes in the free form manner of her mentor, Claude Monet. Perry was an early advocate of the French Impressionist style and contributed to its reception in the United States. Perry's early work was shaped by her exposure to the Boston School of artists and her travels in Europe and Japan. She was also greatly influenced by Ralph Waldo Emerson's philosophies and her friendship with Camille Pissarro. Although it was not until the age of thirty-six that Perry received formal training, her work with artists of the Impressionist, Realist, Symbolist, and German Social Realist movements greatly affected the style of her oeuvre.
context_section_description: A new inspiration entered her life in 1897 when her husband received a teaching position in Japan as an English professor at the Keio Gijuku University. Lilla Perry met Okakura Kakuzō, one of the Imperial Art School co-founders. For three years Perry resided in Japan and took full advantage of its unique artistic community. In October 1898 Perry exhibited her work in Tokyo, with the assistance of Kakuzo, and became an honorary member of the Nippon Bijutsu-In Art Association. Perry's involvement with the Asian art world greatly influenced her work and made it possible for her to develop a unique style that brought together western and eastern aesthetic traditions. Her Meditation, Child in a Kimono and Young Girl with an Orange vibrantly illustrates the distinct changes that occurred in Perry's work during her stay in Japan. Unlike her earlier works, both compositions draw on uniquely eastern subject matter and show a strong influence of the clean lines from Japanese prints. The result of this blending of east and west is striking with Impressionist portraits flowing seamlessly with the well-organized, balanced compositions that the eastern art world was known for at this time. Mount Fuji became the subject of 35 or more paintings and she made a total of more than 80 paintings while in Japan.
caption: Lilla Cabot Perry, In a Japanese Garden, 1898-1901
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