In the beginning of the 20th century, Japanese postcard artists and their publishers showed a great interest in Western art nouveau, which had a considerable stylistic influence on many of their creations.*

In the same period, the Western artistic world developed a similar fascination for Japanese art and culture. In the work of Raphaël Kirchner, this so-called japonism can clearly be observed in sets such as Geisha, Mikado, Santoy, Les Parfums (1 card), but also in some of the many advertisements the artist realized for the Parfums Lubin and, of course, in the exquisite illustrations for Jane de la Vaudère’s La Cité des Sourires.

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* On the website of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, which hosts the gigantic postcard collection of Leonard Lauder, one can discover thousands of marvelous examples of this cross-pollination between Western and Japanese culture.