Ernest Fenollosa

• Born: 1853
• Died: 1908

Ernest Fenollosa was a late 19th century American art collector and early expert on Japanese art who, alongside Okakura Kakuzô, played key roles in both establishing the modern canonical understanding of Japanese art history and introducing it to the United States. His collection, along with those of a small handful of other individuals such as Edward Sylvester Morse and William Sturgis Bigelow, formed the initial core of the Japanese art collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Fenollosa arrived in Japan in 1878 after Morse wrote to a number of individuals or institutions in the United States expressing that Tokyo Imperial University (today, University of Tokyo) was seeking a professor of philosophy. He took an interest in Japanese art shortly after arriving, inspired it is said in part by a lecture given by William Anderson at the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1879 (Anderson would be named curator of Japanese art at the British Museum two years later).

In the 1880s, Fenollosa and Okakura were authorized by the Meiji government to survey the major treasures of Japanese art, to construct a canon, and to establish a basic narrative of Japanese art history. Their photographs and notes became the groundwork for a canon that is still influential today, including which artworks are and are not the most famous, the most often included in textbooks, the most celebrated. One notable incident during this survey was the unveiling of the Yumedono Kannon, a sacred sculpture held at Hôryû-ji which had been hidden for more than one thousand years; while most discussions of this event today are strongly critical, some emphasize the Meiji government's approval and of Okakura.

Fenollosa also played a role in encouraging the development of Nihonga, or neo-traditional Japanese painting. At a time when the prevailing culture in Japan was a powerful enthusiasm for Westernization, Fenollosa, Okakura, and others encouraged appreciation of Japan's own traditional culture, and the value of maintaining and adapting this into the modern era. He founded a Painting Appreciation Society, or Kangakai in 1884, which began holding formal painting competitions the following year, and guided artists such as Kanô Hôgai in incorporating Western elements of realism, perspective, and attention to light and shadow into traditional Japanese painting, developing what was at that time seen as a "national" painting style that could be celebrated as both decidedly Japanese, and modern.

Fenollosa traveled with Okakura on a one-year art tour of the United States and Europe in 1886, before returning to Japan. He then returned to the United States in 1890. He returned to Japan again, however, and in 1896 co-founded a "Japan Painting Association" (Nihon Kaiga Kyôkai) with Okakura.

Fenollosa's second wife was Mary McNeil Fenollosa (1865-1954).

Following his death in 1908, Fenollosa was buried at Hômyô-in, a small branch temple of Miidera in Ôtsu (Shiga prefecture), where he had lived for a time. Figures such as Gaston Migeon, Laurence Binyon, Arthur Wesley Dow, and Charles Lang Freer donated funds for the gravestones. Ezra Pound was entrusted with editing and publishing a manuscript by Fenollosa on Noh theatre; the book, entitled Noh: or Accomplishment, a Study of the Classical Stage of Japan, was significant in introducing Noh to the West following its publication in 1916.