Paul Jacoulet

1902 - 1960

The White Lotus Gallery is proud to present the works of Paul Jacoulet.

Selected available works


Kiyoshi. Tokio 18 1/2" x 14 1/4"	Le Genie Sans Nom Coree 18 1/2" x 14 1/4" Sold

Marionettes Chinoises 18 1/2" x 14 1/4" Sold	La Balance. "Chinois" 18 3/4 x 14 1/4

La Soupe aux Huitres. Chinois 18 5/8" x 14" Sold	Le Bons Piments Rouges! Johokuri Coree 18 1/2" x 14 1/4" Sold

Born in France, Paul Jacoulet was taken to Japan by his parents in 1906, and it was in Japan that he spent the rest of his life. Afforded a comfortable upbringing, young Paul was tutored in the arts and studied Japanese brushwork as well as Western style painting.

As Jacoulet grew up, he immersed himself in Japanese culture. Kabuki, the ballad-drama, Joruri, and collecting antique Japanese prints became his passions. Beginning in his thirties, he traveled extensively. He was captured by the islands of the South Seas and also spent time in Manchuria and Korea. People met in these travels often appear in his prints and contribute to the exotic character of his work. Jacoulet turned out, in some cases, to be the only chronicler of villagers whose villages, and even islands, have effectively ceased to exist. Art historian Richard Miles believes Paul Jacoulet considered his works “serious attempts to depict a world that was not ‘floating’ in the widely accepted sense of transitory pleasure, but an actually dying world of rather sad, imperfect people, observed with merciless clarity.”

Jacoulet assembled the finest carvers and printers in Japan and began making woodblock prints in 1934. He completed fewer than one hundred and seventy known images in his lifetime, and this show is fairly representative of his oeuvre. His work is widely collected and represents the apex in technical accomplishment of the woodblock art form. It demonstrates not only Jacoulet’s sensibility and compassion but also his devotion to refinement and taste and the renaissance of Japanese woodblock prints in the twentieth century.