Thirty-Six Views: How Japanese Aesthetics Converged with the Eiffel Tower

In the final days of January 1887, construction crews began laying the foundational stones for Gustave Eiffel's monumental tower. The engineering feat was completed in an astonishingly brief period, anticipating the 1889 World's Fair, officially known as the Exposition Universelle. Upon its completion, the structure reached a staggering height of 330 meters, instantly establishing itself as the tallest man-made edifice the world had ever witnessed. For its fervent advocates, this iron giant served as a potent symbol of French industrial supremacy and technological progress. However, from the very inception of its construction, the project was engulfed in a storm of public controversy and intense debate. A significant portion of the populace and the artistic community viewed the structure as a grotesque, utilitarian eyesore with no aesthetic merit. Critics anxiously predicted that the towering mass would cast a permanent, oppressive shadow over cherished historic landmarks, specifically the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Pantheon.

As the intricate assembly of iron girders commenced, influential cultural voices joined the fray to condemn the project. The renowned novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans famously dismissed the tower as a "hole-riddled suppository," a derisive metaphor highlighting the structure's perforated, skeletal appearance. Another literary figure, Léon Bloy, went further to deride the edifice as a "truly tragic streetlamp," suggesting it was a vulgar imposition on the Parisian skyline. Yet, not every observer shared this negativity; many saw within this engineering marvel a powerful harbinger of a new, modern age. This shifting cultural spirit would later find profound expression in poetry and visual art. Nevertheless, for the painters and printmakers of the 1880s and 1890s, a critical artistic question remained unresolved: how could traditional art forms successfully capture the essence of this so-called Iron Lady?

The answer to this artistic dilemma, perhaps surprisingly, was found in the distant art of Japan. This connection becomes logically apparent when considering the cultural phenomenon known as "Japonisme" that swept through France during the latter half of the nineteenth century. This fascination originated in the 1850s following Japan's decision to end a prolonged era of national isolation and open its ports to international trade. Consequently, a flood of Japanese goods, including decorative fans, folding screens, kimonos, and particularly ukiyo-e woodblock prints, inundated the European market. Leading artists such as Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, and Vincent van Gogh became captivated by these imports. They were deeply attracted to the prints' unfamiliar aesthetics, their novel compositions and unconventional perspectives, and their bold utilization of flat color and expansive negative space.

Henri Rivière (1864–1951) shared this profound enthusiasm for Japanese art. A native of Paris who divided his creative time between the capital and the rugged coast of Brittany, Rivière distinguished himself from his contemporaries. He was not satisfied with merely imitating the superficial visual style of Japanese prints. Instead, he was driven by a determined ambition to master the traditional Japanese printing techniques themselves, a complex and meticulous craft that was largely unknown in Europe at the time.

In 1888, just as the Eiffel Tower began its ascent along the banks of the Seine, Rivière embarked on an ambitious and highly experimental artistic project. He planned to create a series of color woodcuts directly inspired by the famous series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (1830–32) by the Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai. A major challenge facing Rivière was the complete absence of instruction manuals or technical guides for Japanese techniques in France. He was forced to proceed entirely through guesswork, rigorous trial, and error. He experimented extensively with water-diluted pigments rather than the oily, opaque inks standard to European printing processes. He even crafted his own specialized tools, such as a disk-shaped baren, which is a tool used to press the inked woodblock onto paper by hand. In undertaking this work, Rivière broke a long-standing tradition in French art, wherein the artist who designed the image was typically separate from the artisan who engraved the block and printed the final image. Rivière combined all these distinct roles into one.

During this intensive experimental phase, Rivière produced two preliminary color woodcuts: Le chantier de la Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower's construction site) and La Tour Eiffel du viaduc d'Auteuil (The Eiffel Tower from the Auteuil viaduct). He soon concluded that the woodcut process was too slow and restrictive, as it could only yield a limited number of high-quality prints. For the full series of thirty-six views of the Eiffel Tower, he ultimately chose to work in lithography, a different and more versatile printmaking technique. Yet, these initial woodcut experiments profoundly influenced the stylistic evolution and the spiritual essence of the final series.

Some of the most compelling images in Les trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel focus intently on the laborers, technicians, and craftsmen who constructed the tower. These are the countless hands that rendered its rapid construction possible. In Hokusai's original Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, the viewer encounters fishermen and rice harvesters integrated harmoniously into the natural landscape. Rivière, however, presents the workers of a distinctively industrial era. His figures are depicted hauling freight, loading steamboats, and maneuvering heavy iron beams with great physical exertion. His color palette also underwent a significant shift. Instead of Hokusai's vibrant blues and greens representing the vitality of nature, Rivière employed more muted tones of brown, grey, and ochre. These colors were chosen to reflect the cold metalwork, stone, and masonry of the modern city.

Perhaps most striking is Rivière's innovative employment of Japanese compositional techniques to depict modern Paris. He frequently utilized aggressive cropping of his images, a stylistic choice common in ukiyo-e prints. This specific cropping mirrors how people in a vast, modern city actually encounter the Eiffel Tower. Despite its colossal size, the tower is rarely seen in its entirety from a single vantage point. It is often glimpsed between buildings, rising abruptly above rooftops, appearing in fragmented fragments rather than as a unified, singular whole.

The expansive growth of Paris in the 1800s finds its visual expression through this fragmented style. For instance, a dense cluster of chimney pots might sprawl into the distance and disappear beyond the edge of the frame. This visual technique suggests the city's seemingly boundless and sprawling scale, creating a sense of endless urban density.

Four specific images in the series offer a particularly fascinating perspective: En haut de la Tour (At the top of the tower), Dans la Tour (On the tower), Ouvrier plombier dans la Tour (Ironworker on the tower), and Le peintre dans la Tour (The painter on the tower). These close-up views of the tower's iron girders were based on photographs that Rivière took himself during a press tour while the tower was still under construction. The resulting lithographs represent a unique blend of past and future artistic traditions. They look back to the compositional methods of Japanese woodblocks while simultaneously looking forward to the emerging art of photography and its distinct, casual format: the snapshot.

Rivière's series presents the Eiffel Tower not as a static monument, but as a living, dynamic element of the ever-changing urban landscape. It is seen from bridges, busy streets, boats navigating the Seine, and quiet rooftops. It appears in bright sunshine, under rainy skies, and during national celebrations like Bastille Day. The views show the tower from near and far, seamlessly integrating it into the daily life and work of Paris. The series includes varied scenes such as "From the Quai de Passy – Coalmen," which shows laborers with the tower looming in the background, and "Celebration on the Seine, 14 July," which captures the spectacle of fireworks reflecting in the water near the tower's base. "From the Trocadéro Gardens, Autumn" frames the iron structure with the bare branches of trees. Each view offers a distinct commentary on the relationship between the colossal new structure and the human-scale city surrounding it.

Through these thirty-six views, Henri Rivière achieved something unique in the history of art. He successfully fused the artistic language of nineteenth-century Japan with the defining symbol of modern Paris. He did not simply document the tower; he interpreted it through a specific, culturally rich artistic lens. His work demonstrates how a new, industrial object could be understood and represented through an old, refined artistic tradition. The series stands as a vital cultural bridge between two worlds: the timeless, elegant aesthetics of ukiyo-e and the dynamic, fragmented visual experience of the modern metropolis.