AMSTERDAM — In the soft, clear light of Provence, France, Vincent van Gogh saw the crisp skies of Japanese woodcut prints. The almond blossoms, gnarled trees and irises that dotted the French landscape reminded him of nature scenes painted in Kyoto. And in the locals who drank in cafes of Arles, he saw resonances with the geishas and Kabuki actors of a country he’d never visited.

“My dear brother, you know, I feel I’m in Japan,” van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo, on March 16, 1888, not long after he had settled in Arles, an ancient city built on Roman ruins by the Rhône River in France.

By June he was urging Theo and other Impressionist artists in Paris to join him in there. “I’d like you to spend some time here, you’d feel it,” he wrote. “After some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel color differently.”