Which Dutch painter was heavily influenced by ukiyo-e prints?

Vincent van Gogh was the Dutch painter heavily influenced by ukiyo-e prints.

Van Gogh’s interest in Japanese art developed first in Antwerp in 1885, where he acquired ukiyo-e prints and used them to decorate his studio. After moving to Paris in 1886, he and his brother Theo collected hundreds of Japanese prints, many of which are now held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

The influence was both thematic and formal. Van Gogh admired ukiyo-e’s strong outlines, flat areas of vivid colour, unusual cropping, asymmetrical compositions, and unconventional perspectives. He organized a Japanese print exhibition in Paris in 1887 and incorporated prints into works such as Portrait of Père Tanguy, whose background displays recognizable Japanese images.

He also made painted copies of prints by Utagawa Hiroshige and Keisai Eisen. The Courtesan, painted in 1887, was based on an Eisen design, while Flowering Plum Tree and Bridge in the Rain reworked Hiroshige compositions. A common mix-up is to treat this as simple imitation: Van Gogh used ukiyo-e as a springboard for a highly personal style and even imagined southern France as a kind of artistic Japan.