Between the 1860s and the 1880s the western art world was obsessed with Japanese culture, Whistler playing and instrumental role in establishing its popularity in Britain. Hornel was one of the few artists to journey to Japan itself. In 1893 he made an eighteen-month tour with George Henry, at the instigation and expense of the picture dealer Alexander Reid and the Glasgow ship owner and collector William Burrell. It was frowned upon for Westerners to live among the Japanese, but Hornel and Henry felt that they would never come to know the country if they did not, and for some months they were employed by a Japanese house agent. 

Hornel's Japanese paintings attempt to synthesize the art of East and West, combining the highly decorative outlines of Japanese prints with his own colourful and richly painted surface. 

Edward Atkinson Hornel, 1864-1933

Hornel was born in Australia, but as an infant returned with his family to Kirkcudbright, from where they earlier emigrated. He studied art in Edinburgh, and in Antwerp under Charles Verlat. During the late 1880s and early 1890s he rented a studio in Glasgow and formed a friendship with a fellow Glasgow Boy, George Henry. Together they developed a new decorative style that superseded the early realism of the Glasgow Boys. Hornel's work of this period concentrated on colour and pattern and became very popular, but this very popularity led him, after about 1919, to adopt a formulaic and sterile approach to painting.