Some collectors of Japanese paintings and prints
The British Museum collections contain many works of art which
originally belonged to private collectors. Their writings often
provide interesting historical perspectives on Japanese art.
Augustus Wollaston Franks, Keeper of British and Medieval
Antiquities and Ethnography, was also a keen collector of Japanese
paintings, ceramics and archaeological material. In 1881 he argued
for the acquisition by the Museum of a collection of 3,299 items of
pictorial art that had been made by the surgeon William Anderson
(1842-1900) during seven years spent in Japan from 1873 to 1880.
Anderson also published A Descriptive and Historical Catalogue
of a Collection of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in The British
Museum, and a more substantial volume The Pictorial Arts
of Japan, both in 1886. In his texts he adopted a thoroughly
Western viewpoint in his criticisms of a perceived lack of
anatomical accuracy, and the failure to use chiaroscuro (light and
shade) and Western spatial perspective. Yet there are many aspects
of Japanese painting that he admires, including composition, colour
harmony and drawing skill.
Another keen collector from a very different background was the
writer Arthur Morrison (1863-1945), who in his novels drew
extensively on his childhood experiences in London's East End.
Morrison never visited Japan, but discovered Japanese prints in
London curio shops. He bought many prints and paintings through
Japanese and British friends and agents, and sometimes directly
from the artists themselves. Morrison's book Painters of
Japan (1911) was described by Laurence Binyonm, Keeper of
Oriental Antiquities, as 'thourough, lucid and competent'. Most of
the Morrison Collection was donated to The British Museum in 1913
by the benefactor Sir William Gwynne-Evans, Bt. and other items
were bequeathed on Morrison's death