Page:A history of Japanese colour-prints by Woldemar von Seidlitz.djvu/69

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GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
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of about 2000 Japanese and Chinese paintings and prints from Dr. William Anderson, who had been Professor of the Medical Academy in Tokio. In Paris, where many private collections of Japanese woodcuts came into being—those of Gonse, Bing, Vever, Gillot, Manzy, Rouart, Galimart, and latterly of Koechlin and Count Camondo, deserve special mention—a retrospective exhibition of Japanese art was organised as early as 1883, and was followed by a special exhibition of Japanese wood-engravings in 1890. At the beginning of 1893 a select exhibition of Hiroshige's landscapes took place in Durand Ruel's rooms. The Oriental department of the Louvre possesses a small collection of wood-engravings, and so do the Musee Guimet and the Bibliothèque Nationale (the Duret Collection of illustrated books). A society of Japanophiles (Japonisants), consisting of about fifteen members, holds monthly meetings in Paris. In February 1909 the first exhibition of Japanese wood-engravings in private possession was held in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, and was to be followed by a series of others. In 1888 the Burlington Fine Arts Club organised an exhibition of Japanese wood-engravings; a Japan Society was founded; among English private collections that of Edgar Wilson is specially highly praised. The largest collection, however, is in the possession of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, viz. some 400 screens, 4000 paintings and 10,000 prints, which were brought together by Professor Ernest Francisco Fenollosa, who stayed twelve years in Japan as Imperial Japanese Fine Arts Commissioner, and many years of whose life were spent in describing and classifying these treasures. He also possessed a noteworthy collection of his own. Among other American collections, those of Charles J. Morse and Fred. W. Gookin in Chicago and of George W. Vanderbilt in New York may be mentioned. Mr. Francis Lathrop, of New York, possesses about 170 Kiyonagas. Dr. Bigelow had exhibited a rich collection