Japanese art deeply influenced occidental art in the second half of the 19th century. Edmond de Goncourt wrote in his Journal in April 1884 that "Japonisme, was in the process of revolutionizing the vision of the European peoples, [it] brought to Europe a new sense of color, a new decorative system, and […] a poetic imagination".
From the 1860s, trade agreements between Japan and European countries multiplied, the lacquers, prints or objects of art poured from Far East into the World's Fair. A real enthusiasm rose for Japan, a fashion that would last almost half a century.
Manet and the impressionists were the first Europeans to take Japanese art for a source of inspiration. Seeking for new ways of expression, those painters appropriated this discovery and combined their different styles and artistic conceptions. It was also the interior design that Japonism pervaded with mostly the works of Mackintosh and of Josef Hoffman. Edouard Lièvre, Duvinage and Gabriel Viardot, or also the Daï Nippon company, the Maison des Bambous and the Escalier de Cristal renewed, with this new style, the cabinet manufacturing and the decorative arts.
