Can one Cartier-Bresson hide another? Most people have heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great master of black and white photography. But "HCB" as he was known, had a great-uncle, Charles Cartier-Bresson (1852-1921), who deserves his own place in the history of art lovers. The Nancy Museum of Fine Arts has devoted an attractive summer exhibition to this late 19th-century Japanese art collector, called Un goût d'extrême-Orient (A Taste of the Far East), until 19 September.
Charles Cartier-Bresson was the heir to a textile dynasty and moved to Nancy in the 1890s. He was an active member of the Society of Friends of the Arts and collected more than 1,744 works. His widow left more than 1,300 items, most of them from Japan, to the Nancy museum "according to her husband's instructions". Now, at last, 300 objects, both spiritual and utilitarian, are on show to the public in this perfect exhibition. They include exquisite lacquer ware, prints, painted scrolls, items of furniture, clothing and armour. Visitors can see courtesans playing the shamisen, the traditional three-stringed instrument, an ivory tabako bon, or smoking kit, silk crèpe kimonos and samurai armour, and are transported to a time when Japonisme was all the rage.
When Meiji-era Japan was forcibly opened to the west in 1868, art collectors became very curious. Charles Cartier-Bresson was one of the so-called second wave of initiates, and in 1889 he began buying from the earlier collections of his predecessors, Edmond de Goncourt and Philippe Burty, pioneers of the Japanese fashion.
The exhibition opens windows on a culture that was hidden for so long. The scrolls reveal 100 poems by 100 poets explained by a nursemaid, lulled by the movement of a small, lantern-lit boat. Or the eventful interiors of Kabuki theatres, resembling wild cabarets and equal in every respect to the "green houses" (as the brothels and tea houses were called) of the pleasure districts.
A 10-metre long makimono, or vertical scroll, depicts a night procession of 100 Yukihide demons, grimacing in a very modern way. A print by one of the master woodblock artists, Utamaro, shows children disguised as gods of happiness, which holds its own against those by that other great master, Hiroshige, whose famous "100 views of Edo" so influenced the French impressionists.
Nancy is an appropriate venue for this highly sophisticated art. At the time when HCB's great uncle was acquiring his collection, the cabinet-makers and glass artists of this prosperous city were inventing an Art Nouveau style that was also influenced by Japan. That becomes clear looking at the many stencils presented here as Chinese shadows. They are cut out from paper made from stratified mulberry tree bark soaked in persimmon juice, and reveal delicate snow drops, rainfall and bamboo, that could have been claimed by both Art Nouveau and Art Déco.
This article originally appeared in Le Monde.