В пучине бренного мира. Японское искусство и его коллекционер Сергей Китаев - Евгений Семенович Штейнер

Yokohama Bōeki Shinpo, Oct. 16, 1918. Quoted by Ishigaki, “Serugei Kitaefu to daini no kokyō Nihon,” 108.

Pavlinov’s letter to Vera Z. Kholodovskaya, Apr. 17, 1959, Department of Manuscripts, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, stock 9, inventory II, document 606.

Novoe Vremya 6690, Oct. 13 (25), 1894.

See Ishigaki, “Serugei Kitaefu to daini no kokyō Nihon,” 117.

It should be noted that Voronova, a very charming lady, worked under the most amazing circumstances. She did not specialize in Japanese art at university. She was assigned to deal with the Kitaev Collection without any previous professional background. There were no specialists in Japanese art in Moscow, and there were never enough foreign books. Traveling abroad to see other collections was virtually impossible during the Soviet era, and extremely difficult due to the lack of funds in the post-Soviet period. With all these impediments, it was difficult to expect from the curator more than she was able to accomplish. She retired in 2008 and died in 2017 at the age of ninety.

“Prints from early editions in color: large – 73; medium – 337; black-and-white: large – 1666; medium – 394. Later editions in color: large – 80; medium – 1000.” The Brief List, Department of Manuscripts, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, stock 9, inventory I, document 22. The 1896 exhibition guide mentions “several thousand prints by Hokusai.” See Ukazatel’ vystavki Iaponskoi zhivopisi v Imperatorskoi Academii Khudozhestv, 35. This guide gives a separate entry for each painting, but allows only one entry for prints and sketches, for instance, no. 253 is described as “26 watercolors by Hokusai” and no. 262 is “100 Sino-Japanese war prints.”

See Peter Kornicki et al., Katalog staropečatnych japonskich knig: GMII im. A.S. Pushkina, Gosudarstvenny Musei Vostoka, Rossiiskaya Gosudarstvennaya biblioteka (Catalogue of the early Japanese books: The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the State Museum of Oriental Art, and the Russian State Library) (Moscow: Pashkov Dom, 2001), 144. Although Peter Kornicki did the research for this volume, it is erroneously listed on WorldCat under the name of his translator, Sergej A. Kazancev.

Kitaev’s letter to Pavlinov, Aug. 20, 1916. When Kitaev did buy a fake, in some cases he recognized and admitted it later. In his 1905 exhibition guide, he mentions two forged Hokusai paintings (see fig. 9 in this essay).

Kitaev’s letter to Pavlinov, Aug. 15, 1916. This is the last page of the long letter, even though it is written on the back of the second sheet out of six. On top of this page, Kitaev explains that he unintentionally left it blank and decided to fill it with additional information organized as a table with names and numbers. This page is excluded from the 2008 Pushkin Catalogue.

John Carpenter, Matthi Forrer, Roger Keyes and Timon Screech.

Beata Voronova, “Iz Istorii Sobraniia” (About the history of the collection), in Kornicki et al., Katalog staropečatnych japonskich knig, p. 10. Also Voronova’s introduction to the Pushikin zuroku, p. xiii: “American ukiyo-e specialist Roger Keyes confirmed that it is one of the largest in Europe.”

Roger Keyes, e-mail message to the author, May 3, 2007.

Statement no. 29/b of 20 May, 1924 reports the order of the Museum Department of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. See the Department of Manuscripts, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, stock 5, inventory I, document 478. Ars Asiatica was the museum organized by the decree of the Soviet authorities in late 1918. It changed its name and location several times; since 1992, it has been known as the State Museum of Oriental Art, 12a Nikitskii Boulevard, Moscow.

Department of Manuscripts, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, stock 5, inventory I, document 478.

For example, in 1953 dozens of Kitaev prints were transferred to Russian provincial museums in Chelyabinsk, Rostov and Novosibirsk. See Spisok Proizvedenii Zhivopisi Peredannykh iz GMII v Razlichnye Musei Strany (Lists of paintings transferred from Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts to different museums of the country in the Russian State Archive for Literature and Art), stock 2329, inventory 4, document 124. The list of prints given to the Cheliabinsk Art Gallery can be found on pp. 12–13; to the Rostov Museum of Fine Arts on pp. 34–34a; to the Novosibirsk Art Gallery on p. 69. Many of these prints were duplicates of surimono reprinted in the 1890s (in the case of Matora’s Courtesan Yugiri, Chelyabinsk was given A. 30230, while the Pushkin Museum kept A. 30229 and A. 30231). It is fine to give duplicate copies to provincial museums; I mention it only to illustrate the dispersal of the original collection. Yet, the discrepancy in numbers remains too great.

Nikolai S. Mosolov (1846–1914), a famous engraver, maecenas and collector, bequeathed his fabled collection of prints (mostly Dutch, including 371 by Rembrandt), paintings, Chinese and Japanese bronze and ivories to the Rumyantsev Museum. In June 1925, soon after the closure of that museum and the transfer of its collections to the Pushkin, 126 netsuke and okimono from the Mosolov Collection were found by chance in an antique shop. They had been placed there by the Pushkin for sale and were rescued by F. Gogel, director of Ars Asiaticam (now called the State Museum of Oriental Art), Moscow. See the Archive of the Department of Registration, Custody and Acquisition, State Museum of Oriental Art, 1918–25, file 1, p. 109. Quoted in Vladimir Voitov, Materially po istorii Gosudarstvennogo