Paul Jacoulet (1902-1960) was a French, Japan-based woodblock print artist known for a style that mixed the traditional ukiyo-e style and techniques developed by the artist himself. Technically most of his prints are masterpieces.
THE EARLY YEARS
Jacoulet was born in Paris in 1902 and lived in Japan for most of his life. His father Frederic Jacoulet, was a university professor hired by the Japanese government shortly after his birth to teach French to young aristocrats. But it would be four years before Paul was strong enough to journey to Tokyo with his mother. Paul Jacoulet became fluent in Japanese having grown up in Tokyo. By choice or by necessity, Paul's health issues kept him away from other children, and his mother provided him with numerous master Japanese tutors in the arts and he spent much time drawing and was instructed in Japanese brushwork as well as Western-style painting in oils and pastels. At the age of eleven he began painting.
He excelled at languages, calligraphy, drawing, painting, and also learned to play both the violin and the Japanese shamisen. He embraced Japanese social customs and studied their traditional arts. He attended Japanese schools, and made Japan his permanent home. He started to paint when he was 11 years old under the guidance Seiki Kuroda and Takeji Fujishima.
Jacoulet completed his primary and secondary education at the Tokyo High Normal School, where he was the only Western pupil. Though his father Frederic was called to duty in the French forces during WWI, Paul and his mother Jeanne remained in Tokyo. His father died after the battle of Verdun in France. He accepted a position with the French embassy in Tokyo in 1920, but frail health forced his resignation.
THE PURSUIT OF A FULL TIME CAREER IN THE ARTS
In 1920, Jacoulet began to work for the French Embassy in Tokyo as an interpreter. Paul had a lively interest in Japanese culture and was a frequent guest in the Noh and Kabuki theaters.
He pursued his art full-time from 1921. Tokyo suffered the great earthquake of 1923 and Japan began to engage in the series of bloody confrontations on the Chinese mainland, Paul and his mother Jeanne moved out of the city where Paul continued his studies of painting and printmaking. Jacoulet often traveled to resort areas. Such places included the South Pacific islands of the Marianas, Micronesia, China, Korea, Manchuria, the Carolines and Celebes which he visited almost every year since 1930. The influence of his travels are clearly seen in his worksIn 1929 Jacoulet went on a long trip to Gauguin’s South Seas. He made many sketches and photographs of local natives, dressed and posed elegantly. It was this work that was first translated into woodblock prints. He also went to Korea accompanying his mother who was remarried to a Japanese professor in Seoul after the death of his father. In 1931 he turned to woodblock prints. Two years later he opened the Jacoulet Woodblock Print Institute in Akasaka, Tokyo, which was staffed by leading Japanese artists including carvers and printers. By 1934, he arranged for the fine artist and woodblock carver Kazuo Yamagishi to assist him in producing his first woodblock prints.
WORLD WAR II
During World War II, he moved to Karuizawa, where he survived in the countryside by growing vegetables and raising poultry. Paul Jacoulet had a high opinion of himself as an artist, an opinion not shared by many of his fellow artists and critics; yet his prints were popular in the 30s and late 40s, not least because of their technical virtuosity.
PRINTING TECHNIQUE
He worked with professional carvers and printers. The technical requirements on craftsmanship for a Paul Jacoulet print were so high that he could cooperate only with the very best engravers and printers. Jacoulet used some very elaborate techniques for the creation of his prints. He was a master colorist, exerting direct control over the mixing of colors and printing. His early works comprise a series called "Rainbow" done in the seven colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. This included all the known deluxe features like embossing, lacquers, micas or metal pigments. And he experimented with new techniques like powdered semi-precious stones. A Jacoulet print can be the result of up to 60 different blocks. He once bragged to have used as many as 300 blocks for one print, but one of his assistants later recalled that the number was probably closer to 60 blocks, which is still impressive. Most of Jacoulet's designs show people - either in groups of two or three or as individual portraits. For his prints he used special watermarked papers from Kyoto instead of the normal Japanese washi paper.
He also used decorative artist seals. The "boat" seal for example, was used only from 1939-40, accompanied by the elegant signature he used on his prints. The "duck" seal was used 1935. He completed 166 woodblock prints during his lifetime, most in full-size Oban, and some others in a smaller size he designed as Christmas Cards, called surimono. Each miniature was printed with the same number of blocks as the original oban -size prints, and was tipped into a cut-and-folded sheet of paper with the Chinese symbol for good fortune printed in red or green on the outside, and the words "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" printed on the inside flap. Of his 166 prints, Of these, only 26 deal with Japanese subjects. Among other subjects are Koreans in traditional dress, elderly Ainu people, Chinese beauties and Western residents of Japan.
Jacoulet is considered one of the few western artists to have mastered the art of woodblock printing sufficiently to be recognized in Japan.
After World War II the art work of Jacoulet became rapidly famous. Among his admirers and collectors were General Douglas MacArthur, Greta Garbo, Pope Pius XII and Queen Elizabeth II. During his last years, his health got worse and worse. But Jacoulet continued to produce woodblock prints until the time of his death in 1960. He died of diabetes at the age of 58. He was also an avid butterfly collector with a collection totaling 300,000 species at the time of his death.
Jacoulet prints are rare and not quite cheap - a small market niche. A typical price for a print in good condition is around US$1,000 to 5.000. Apart from condition, the price depends considerably on the attractiveness of the subject. Some of his works hit record prices in the 1980s. A print from 1934, the Parisian Lady was hammered for US$25,000 at an auction.
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