Hokusai And The Art Of Woodblock
Christopher Benfey wanders through the Boston Museum of Fine Arts’s exhibition of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), the Edo-period painter and woodblock printer whose images are known across the world. Benfey writes: ‘Objects in the show are drawn entirely from the MFA’s own astonishing holdings, and some acknowledgment must be accorded to the inspired collector who assembled so many of these treasures. William Sturgis Bigelow, from a prominent Boston family, was trained as a doctor by Pasteur in Paris, but had little relish for medicine. Inspired by Boston-based Orientalists like Edward Morse and Ernest Fenollosa, he traveled to Japan, where he was drawn to falconry and the tenets of esoteric Buddhism. He also collected art on an unimaginable scale, and with a ruthlessly keen eye; he seems to have favored the odd, the astonishing, the bizarre, both in theme and execution.’
