It is difficult to discuss Degas’ nudes without touching on the influence Japanese art had on them. Japanese art became popular in Paris after it was forced to open its borders to trade in 1859, ending a two hundred year period of isolation. At this time, Japanese color woodblock prints, also known as Ukiyo-e prints, and other artworks came to America and France and began circulating among artists and the public alike. (Floyd) Japonisme is the term that is used to describe the influence of Japanese aesthetics and techniques on Western art and was first coined by the French art critic and Japanese print collector Philippe Burty in 1872. (McKinney 3) The Ukiyo-e images were new and exotic to the Western world, and therefore caught the eye of the Impressionists, who were ever battling against the Academy. As Gwen McKinney writes in her book Defining Influence, “These artists rebelled against the traditional notions of academic painting and printmaking by challenging the validity of subject matter and composition in conjunction with what media were deemed respectable or dignified.” (McKinney 3) These French artists had already started a revolution in painting by rebelling against the Academy and creating more controversial art. Japan and its art came to France at a very appropriate time and supplied the artists with ideas about how to make their own painting new and different from the French Academy. As Phylis Floyd comments, “In France, the critic Astruc, among others, advocated the model of Japanese originality as an antidote to the belaboured academic tradition.” (Floyd)
Japanese influence had a huge impact on the nude collection of Degas. The subject itself was by no means a new idea in art. The nude figure is prevalent throughout most of art history, and some critics argue that Degas’ nudes originate in Western art. Lillian Schacher writes, “Degas’ nudes are anchored firmly in the tradition of Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, and Ingres.” (Schacher 74) However, most will agree that Degas’ nudes share little with the nudes of earlier painters of the Western world, who often disguised the nudity in terms of mythology, religion, or nature. The earlier works also offered the viewer a way of entering the picture, usually from a gaze or body gesture, which Degas intentionally avoids. Degas’ figures are instead more similar to the awkward poses women are in in the bathhouses of artists like Hokusai and Kiyonaga. Degas actually owned a print by Kiyonaga, a Japanese artist, entitled Women at Bath. It contains eight different poses, all of which supplied Degas with inspiration. It would have been hard to find a photograph or piece of art in the Western world that would have done the same for him.