An Interview with Japanese Painting Collectors Robert and Betsy Feinberg

In this interview Yukio Lippit, co-curator of the exhibition ‘Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection’ (14 February–26 July 2020) at the Harvard Art Museums, talks to the Feinbergs about their almost half-century of collecting.

Betsy and Bob Feinberg in Kyoto, c. 1989 (Image courtesy of Robert and Betsy Feinberg)

Yukio Lippit  You have mentioned previously that it was a poster of a Nanban screen advertising an exhibition of Japanese art that first attracted you to Japanese painting [‘Nanban’ referring to 16th–17th century Japanese art influenced by contact with the Nanban, or ‘Southern Barbarians’, meaning foreigners]. Over thirty years later, you would end up purchasing an actual pair of Nanban screens—a splendid example from the early 17th century — to add to your Edo period [1603–1868] painting collection. What was it about the poster’s subject that captivated you?

Robert and Betsy Feinberg  Looking back almost fifty years, it’s hard to remember that in 1972 we were young professionals living in Manhattan on a very tight shoestring. Entry to The Metropolitan Museum of Art was free, and it was on one of our many visits that we chanced upon the poster, on sale for two dollars. Our imagination was captured by its image of a painted 17th century Nanban screen—a robust, naive view of a Portuguese sailing ship moored in Nagasaki harbour, manned by strange-looking men with prominent noses and curly moustaches, dressed in outlandish pantaloons and flamboyant hats. Edo Japan had never seen anything like them, and neither had we! In fact, we had never seen a painted Japanese screen at all, and knew absolutely nothing about the history of Europeans in Japan. How and when did the Portuguese discover the first sailing route to ‘The Japans’? How were they received? Why were they and their ships displayed so grandly on huge folding screens? Researching the answers led us into a wilderness of discovery—to our first views of actual Japanese landscape screens and bird-and-flower scroll paintings, to painted fans and Buddhist sculpture, contemporary ceramics and intricately woven reed baskets—all displaying a fascinating new set of aesthetics to which our ‘eyes’ had to become accustomed.

When Betsy’s sister Amy Poster, then assistant curator of Japanese art at the Brooklyn Museum, discovered we were interested, she took us to see Japanese paintings at her museum and then introduced us to a Japanese art dealer in Manhattan, who showed us more. And that was perhaps the most startling discovery of all: having learned to appreciate them, one could actually own such amazing works of art, which at the time were readily available and relatively inexpensive. So you could say that our fortuitous two-dollar purchase almost fifty years ago planted the seed of an interest which grew in breadth and depth as we matured, and ultimately produced our collection.

A Portuguese Trading Ship Arrives in Japan
Artist unknown, Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), early 17th century
Pair of six-panel folding screens, ink, colour and gold on paper, each: 142.7 x 350.4 cm

Feinberg Collection

(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

YL  Your first trip to Japan was in 1982, and you have been visiting regularly ever since. What were your initial impressions of the art and antiquities world there?

RF & BF  After our initial introduction to the arts of Japan, it took us ten years to get up the courage to actually go there. By then, we had researched Japanese art history, pored over photographs of paintings and screens, and visited dealers in New York and London. We had learned enough to know that if we wanted to find a wider choice of works at higher levels of quality, we needed to go to the source, to Japan itself. So, armed with letters of introduction and with our six-year-old daughter Cara in tow, we flew to Osaka and from there went directly to Kyoto, spending three weeks altogether in both Kyoto and Tokyo.

Our first day in Kyoto was unforgettable—perhaps the most astonishing and rewarding of any we have ever spent in Japan. Early that morning—very early in fact, since jet lag had woken all three of us at around 3 a.m.—we walked down to Shinmonzen-dōri, then the centre of Kyoto’s antiquities market. The street was lined with quaint, almost ramshackle Meiji era [1868–1912] buildings, mostly made of wood, all just two storeys high and with shops on the ground floor displaying every kind of antique imaginable: handwoven and hand-dyed cloth, men’s and women’s used kimonos, handbags made from old obis, handmade tools and decorative Meiji ironwork. Among the storefronts was the occasional shop with a large window displaying a single Japanese scroll painting, and it was into one of these that we nervously ventured. Yanagi Shigehiko, the eldest of the great Yanagi family of art dealers, was waiting for us in the back of the narrow shop, and we were soon seated on low sofas gingerly consuming small cups of bitter green tea and sweet cakes as Yanagi-san tried to learn more about us. What did we want him to show us? How serious were we? Did these two young Americans know enough to distinguish average paintings from good, and good works from excellent?

Seated in front of his tokonoma, or alcove, we watched his young employees unroll and hang for us half a dozen scroll paintings, each as dull and disappointing as the last. Our lack of interest must have registered, for after a few moments of silent contemplation Mr Yanagi stood up, dismissed his assistants, and beckoned us to follow him. We mounted a steep set of old wooden stairs that led to a crude, unfinished attic, where he snapped on the single bulb hanging from the wood roof beams overhead. Leaning against the rough wood walls were multiple sets of large screens, while stacks of scrolls in their handmade storage boxes occupied the shadowy corners. We looked at each other with the same unspoken thought: would any of it be better than what we had already seen, and if so, would it be offered to two inexperienced young foreigners like us? Then, in that ill-lit and dusty old attic, with no flourish whatsoever, Mr Yanagi unveiled two of the greatest works we have ever added to our collection. First came the pair of two-panel screens Cranes, by Suzuki Kiitsu [1796–1858]; then he unrolled the huge ink painting Grasses and Moon, with the giant red seal of Tani Bunchō [1763–1841]. As Yanagi-san stepped back to watch our reaction, we realized we must have passed our first test: we had quite literally been elevated to the level reserved for serious collectors.

Cranes
By Suzuki Kiitsu (1796-1858), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), c. 1825-30

Pair of two-panel folding screens, ink, colour and gold on paper, each: 178 x 188.4 cm
Feinberg Collection
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Grasses and Moon
By Tani Bunchō (1783-1841), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), 1817
Hanging scroll, ink on silk, 82.8 x 168 cm
Feinberg Collection
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

YL  In collecting artworks, you have consistently relied on your own taste and instincts, as well as on intensive study. At the same time, you have developed close friendships with leading Japanese scholars. One of these is Kobayashi Tadashi, the current director of Okada Museum of Art and chief editor of Kokka magazine. Can you tell us how your relationship with him has informed your understanding of this artistic tradition? 

RF & BF  Luckily for us, the Freer Gallery of Art is close to our home in Washington, DC. We visited there often to see its monumental collection of paintings and screens, and soon got to know Yoshiaki Shimizu, who was the Freer’s curator of Japanese art from 1979 to 1984. When Kobayashi Tadashi, who is one of Japan’s most prominent scholars of Edo period painting, came for a residency at the museum, Yoshi brought him to see our collection. Unusually for a Japanese art scholar, Kobayashi sensei, then a professor at Gakushūin University in Tokyo, spoke some English and was comfortable meeting with gaijin [foreigners] who were interested in Japanese art. We got on well, talking at length about his research and our own collecting interests, so when we planned our next visit to Japan we wrote, hoping to see him again. Kobayashi sensei met us in Tokyo and spent a full day introducing us to the great Idemitsu and Nezu museums, which were showing superb exhibitions of Edo painting. At the end of the day, he mentioned that his father had been a sushi chef and took us to a local restaurant, where he showed us the finer points of eating sushi and drinking Japanese beer. After a welcome like that, we made sure to meet with Kobayashi sensei whenever we were in Japan, and also often managed to see him when he came to the East Coast. Over our many years of collecting, he and his wife Yasuko became close friends.

Kobayashi sensei was clearly eager to help build our understanding of Japanese painting, but he wanted us to make our own decisions as to what we would purchase. Only once did he invite us to go with him to visit a dealer—someone he had never met but who had a particular painting he wanted to see. In the dealer’s showroom, we sat quietly while the two men talked in rapid Japanese about the three works being displayed—a painting of a tiger by Ganku [1749–1838], a pair of large six-panel folding screens of geese by Maruyama Ōkyo [1733–95] and a two-panel screen by Sakai Hōitsu [1761–1828] depicting the episode ‘The Ivy Way through Mount Utsu’ from the Tales of Ise. When they had finished, Kobayashi sensei thanked the dealer and bowed, and we left the shop together. Once on the street outside, he turned to us and asked what we thought of what we had seen. We ventured that the tiger painting didn’t look right, an opinion he shared. The Ōkyo screens, we said, seemed right but were unexciting. With this he disagreed, saying that he had in fact liked them. As for the Hōitsu screen, I had excitedly recognized it as a well-known and widely published work, and asked him if he thought it might be for sale. He smiled at this, and suggested I go back in and ask the dealer myself—which, haltingly, I did, in English, nervous about my approach and expecting a polite refusal. Fifteen minutes later, I stumbled back outside somewhat shaken, having just purchased one of the most important works in our collection. Kobayashi sensei was delighted!

Kobayashi Tadashi (seated) with his wife Yasuko and Professor Kawai Masatomo working in the Feinberg residence, c. 1998-99 (Image courtesy of Robert and Betsy Feinberg)

The Ivy Way through Mount Utsu
By Sakai Hōitsu (1761-1828), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), c. 1815
Two-panel folding screen, ink, colour and gold on paper, 157.5 x 164.5 cm
Harvard Art Museums/ Arthur M. Sackler Museum Gift of Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg (2016.235)
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

YL  Were any other figures or collections of Japanese art influential in your collecting activity early on?

RF & BF  When we started collecting there were only a few American collectors seriously interested in Edo period painting, and it didn’t take us long to meet most of them. Kurt Gitter, who had started collecting as a young US Army physician during a posting to Japan after the Second World War, was the first. Though we were only beginners, he invited us to New Orleans for a symposium on his own collection, and it was there that we first encountered many others active in the Japanese art world—collectors, scholars, curators and dealers from all over the US. We were also introduced early on to Mary Burke, arguably the greatest collector of Japanese art in America, and visited her and her remarkable collection in New York. We managed to visit Bill Clark’s remarkable compound with its elegant museum, the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture, in Hanford, California, several times. Bill’s personal warmth and infectious enthusiasm for all things Japanese led to an easy friendship, and we also met him on the East Coast, especially when he came to the Freer Gallery, of which he was board chairman. At that time, I also served on the Freer’s board and thus got to know Jim Ulak, the Freer’s senior curator of Japanese art from 1995 to 2019 [and deputy director 2003–10], who had lived in Tokyo for many years and became an encyclopaedic resource on all things Japanese for us.

When we started going to Japan, our experience there was moulded by a few dealers of Japanese paintings who took a special interest in us as both suppliers and friends, including Yanagi Takashi and Yanagi Shigehiko, Yanagi Hiroshi and his wife Harumi, and the great American collector/dealer Harry Packard, all in Kyoto. In Tokyo, collector/dealer Klaus Naumann and his wife Yoshie became close friends, hosting us at their country home in Karuizawa, where we took long walks in the surrounding mountains. The Naumanns remain close friends today.

Manzai Performance
By Yokoi Kinkoku (1761-1832), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), late 18th- early 19th century
Hanging scroll, ink and light colour on paper, 55.5 x 82.5 cm
Feinberg Collection
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

YL  You both have highly developed areas of expertise unrelated to the art world. Bob, you hold a PhD in chemistry and were formerly on the faculty of Rockefeller University. Betsy, for years you have pursued various projects in relation to non-sighted communities. Do these specialities somehow inform your appreciation of Edo paintings?

RF  Oddly enough, it’s not hard to understand how a doctorate in organic chemistry might have informed my interest in Japanese painting. Years of doing advanced research taught me how to investigate my interests in depth, no matter their subject. Discovering the novelty of Japanese paintings led inevitably to further study, especially of Japanese history, to better understand the cultural changes that produced the fresh new styles of Edo period painting.

BF  For me, having taught both blind and visually impaired children of all ages, I was used to helping their parents and teachers articulate the details of what a child with limited sight might be touching, feeling and perceiving. This meant that when looking at paintings, I was especially sensitive to movement and vitality, which I could then easily discuss with Bob, especially when it came time to decide what we would buy and what we would leave behind.

YL  Which artists have grown more interesting to you as you’ve become increasingly familiar with their work?

RF & BF  Two artists come immediately to mind, one Rinpa and one Nanga. As a late painter in the Rinpa lineage, Suzuki Kiitsu’s accomplishment is especially fascinating. Ogata Kōrin [1658–1716] was regarded as the founder of the Rinpa style, and most students of Japanese art have seen his remarkable Cranes screens at the Freer [F1956.20-21]. Sakai Hōitsu, a self-affirmed follower of Kōrin and Kiitsu’s teacher, painted a free copy of them in the early 19th century, repositioning some of the birds but retaining the stiff formality of Kōrin’s design [Worcester Art Museum; 1964.9]. And Kiitsu painted his own version, clearly expressing his personal taste and mature skill—the pair of screens titled Cranes in our own collection. In this remarkable painting, he has spaced the long-legged birds in graceful groups, interacting naturally before a winding blue stream that guides the viewer’s eye easily through the composition. For both of us, this breathtakingly powerful work elevates the Rinpa style to the absolute peak of its expressiveness at the very end of the Edo period.

The Nanga artist is Yokoi Kinkoku [1761–1832], a late Edo period painter. I was not overly familiar with the Nanga tradition when, early in our collecting career, a visiting dealer from Japan first showed us a Kinkoku painting. It was an ink painting of Japanese minstrels [manzai] who went from place to place playing and singing for a few yen to welcome in the New Year. On an otherwise blank ground, a few cursory ink strokes suggest a singer and drummer performing for a small group. I thought it really uninteresting, but Betsy loved it so we bought it. The scroll hung over our fireplace for several months, and glancing at it often as I passed by, the painting’s artistic power became understandable, then attractive—finally even arresting. Real appreciation of other Kinkoku paintings followed. Ultimately, we acquired the monumental pair of landscape screens Views of Lake Biwa at Sakamoto, dated only several months before Kinkoku’s death—perhaps the last work he ever completed. These elegant 19th century screens express a fully domesticated Nanga style that emerged from the much earlier tastes of Chinese intellectuals, an aesthetic evolution that could only have succeeded in the creative maelstrom of the Edo period.

Views of Lake Biwa at Sakamoto
By Yokoi Kinkoku (1761-1832), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), late 18th- early 19th century
Pair of six-panel folding screens, ink and colour on paper, 156 x 348 cm
Feinberg Collection
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

YL  Some of your artworks illuminate the development of lineages and the role of master-disciple relationships in Edo painting. One example is the presence in your collection of works by both Takada Keiho [1674–1755] and Soga Shōhaku [1730–81]. Did this happen by accident, or was it a conscious decision on your part to showcase such cultural narratives?

RF & BF  It was no accident. When we saw the Keiho painting neither of us thought it was a great work of art, but we were intrigued by its stylistic resemblance to Soga Shōhaku’s unconventional ink paintings. Talking with the dealer, we learned that Keiho had in fact been Shōhaku’s teacher. Shōhaku was one of the four great Edo period ‘eccentrics’, who broke from the strict stylistic confines of the old courtier-supported Kano school and developed groundbreaking new painting forms of their own that appealed to the eclectic tastes of newly wealthy commoners. This narrative holds that each of the eccentrics worked alone and that their nonconformist work set them dramatically apart from other styles. So it came as a real surprise to discover that Shōhaku had not developed his wild, sometimes even crazy paintings entirely of his own accord, but had in fact been strongly influenced by a relatively unknown teacher. The Takada Keiho painting we were shown so closely resembled the style of one of our Shōhaku ink landscapes that, at first, we mistook it for a Shōhaku. Purchasing it gave us the opportunity to put works by Keiho and Shōhaku side by side for close comparison, illuminating how one of the most individualistic painters of the Edo period had developed his style.

YL  Over the years, you have hosted many scholars and groups of students from university programmes around the world. Could you share some of your experiences?

RF & BF  Of the many groups that have come to our home, the most memorable have been the several visits by Professor Kobayashi Tadashi with his students from Gakushūin University in Tokyo. They would file into the hall of our house, astonished to see Japanese paintings hanging not in a museum, not under glass, but on the walls of an American home. Kobayashi sensei would divide the students into small groups to measure, photograph and study each piece, drifting from room to room to check on their work.

Mount Fuji, Miho Pine Forest and Seikenji Temple
By Takada Keiho (1674-1755), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), 1746
Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 52.4 x 82.8 cm
Feinberg Collection
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

Ink Landscape
By Soga Shōhaku (1730-81), Japan, Edo period (1603-1868), c. 1770-81
Hanging scroll, ink on paper, 128 x 53.6 cm
Feinberg Collection
(Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College)

YL  You have promised to donate your collection to the Harvard Art Museums. Why was it important to you to gift the works to a university museum, and what role do you think exposure to Japanese art might play in one’s intellectual formation?

RF  We didn’t think of giving our collection to any other university museum—we wanted it to go to Harvard! We knew it would be skilfully maintained and beautifully exhibited there. It was also important to be sure that our collection could be lent to venues around the world, especially to Japanese museums in the cities where the paintings were originally created. But most importantly, we wanted our collection to go to Harvard to support its status as one of America’s greatest centres for the teaching of Japanese art and culture. The surest way to ignite students’ passion for art is to give them direct contact with beautiful objects, and we wanted exceptional teachers of Japanese art and culture like yourself and Melissa McCormick, professor of Japanese art and culture at Harvard, and curator Rachel Saunders, to have this opportunity.

One last thought: the thrill of discovering Japanese art and the excitement and pleasures of collecting it came long after my four extraordinarly formative years at Harvard College. I was an undergraduate chemistry major, and despite the fact that it was close to my labs, I don’t remember ever finding a reason to visit the Fogg Museum, as it was in those days. The spectacular 2014 renovation has now projected the resurrected Harvard Art Museums into the consciousness of the full university, incorporating a remarkable teaching facility, an outstanding space for mounting exciting exhibitions, and a welcome gathering spot for Harvard students and faculty alike. It has become a true destination museum, open and attractive to the full academic community and the visiting public. In that comfortable space, if our gifts help to train future generations of professors and curators of Japanese art, thrill the public and perhaps astonish a few young chemists discovering Japanese painting for the first time, we will be very content.

Yukio Lippit is Jeffrey T. Chambers and Andrea Okamura Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

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