ABSTRACT
Ernest Chesneau was the first art critic in France to embrace the arts of Japan, but he remains little studied despite his important role in the history of Japonisme. This chapter traces the origin of his interests in Japanese art by examining his correspondence with John Ruskin, his views on national art and art education, and his evaluation of James McNeill Whistler. Chesneau’s major contributions to Japonisme include his observation that Edgar Degas studied Japanese woodblock prints when creating his paintings for the 1867 Salon, a fact that has to date been overlooked in research on the French artist. Chesneau also proposed an influential theory about the aesthetic correspondences between Japanese and Greek conceptions of beauty.
