What was Japonisme and how did it influence nineteenth-century art? Use Mary Cassatt's Woman Bathing as an example.

What will be an ideal response?

The ideal answer should include:
1. The U.S. Navy forcibly opened Japan to Western trade in 1853, and the Paris International Exposition of 1867 hosted the first exhibition of Japanese prints in Europe. Soon, Japanese lacquers, fans, bronzes, scrolls, and ukiyo-e prints appeared for sale in specialty shops, art galleries, and some department stores.
2. It became fashionable for those in the art world to collect Japanese objects for their homes, and the French obsession with Japan and its arts became known as Japonisme.
3. Mary Cassatt emulated the compositions, designs, and colors of ukiyo-e after multiple visits to an influence 1890 exhibition of woodblock prints.
4. Her Woman Bathing features the cropped, diagonally structured, and asymmetrical composition of Japanese woodblock prints, as well as their focus on the private lives of women, their emphasis on outline and pattern over form and space, and their use of broad, flat, unmodulated areas of color and tone.