Europese vrouw met geit 1823

Totoya Hokkei made this woodblock print of a European woman with a goat sometime between 1800 and 1850. In this period the Japanese art world was changing rapidly, with the import of new ideas from the West reshaping many aspects of Japanese culture. Prints of this kind, often made for popular consumption, are a fascinating example of how artists were interpreting unfamiliar subjects and how those interpretations circulated among the Japanese population. The artist here is trying to depict a European woman, note the Western style of dress and the European-style buildings in the background. The presence of a goat could be symbolic, perhaps alluding to Western pastoral traditions. These visual cues give us an insight into how Japanese artists and audiences perceived the West at that time, and what aspects of Western culture they chose to represent. To understand this print fully, we need to look at the historical context of Japanese-Western interactions, the circulation of images, and the social values that underpinned Hokkei's work.