Rising sun at Te Papa: the Heriot collection of Japanese art

Tuhinga 29: 50-76

ABSTRACT: In 2016, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) acquired more than 60 Japanese artworks from the private collection of Ian and Mary Heriot. The works make a significant addition to the graphic art collections of the national museum. Their variety and quality offer a representative overview of the art of the Japanese woodblock print, and potentially illustrate the impact of Japanese arts on those of New Zealand in appropriately conceived curatorial projects. Additionally, they inform fresh perspectives on New Zealand collecting interests during the last 40 years. After a discussion of the history and motivations behind the collection, this article introduces a representative selection of these works, arranged according to the conventional subject categories popular with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Japanese audiences. Bijin-ga pictures of beautiful women, genre scenes and kabuki-e popular theatre prints reflect the hedonistic re-creations of ukiyo ‘floating world’ sensibilities in the crowded streets of Edo. Kachōga ‘bird and flower pictures’ and fukeiga landscapes convey Japanese sensitivities to the natural world. Exquisitely printed surimono limited editions demonstrate literati tastes for refined poetic elegance, and shin-hanga ‘new prints’ reflect changes in sensibility through Japan’s great period of modernisation. In sum, these works offer holistic appreciations of the diversity of pictorial interests, the technical and aesthetic triumphs of the polychrome woodblock print, and the emergence and ability of Japanese arts to engage international viewers today.

KEYWORDS: art collecting, Edo, Japanese art, ukiyo-e, nishiki-e, shin-hanga, bijin-ga, kabuki-e, fukeiga, kachōga, surimono.