Ernest Fenollosa

Fenollosa's grave at Hômyô-in in Ôtsu

• Born: 1853 Feb 18
• Died: 1908 Sept 21
• Other Names: 諦信 (Teishin)

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 was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His father, Manuel Francisco Ciriaco Fenollosa, was a musician from Spain; his mother, Mary Silsbee, was from a prominent elite Boston-area family. He attended Harvard University and graduated in 1874.

Fenollosa married his first wife, Elizabeth Millett, in 1878, and moved to Japan that same year, 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). He had two children with Elizabeth: a son, Ernest "Kano" (1880-1887), who died young; and a daughter, Brenda (b. 1883), who went on to live a long life, dying in 1959 at age 75.

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.

At some point, Fenollosa, along with Bigelow, developed a close relationship with Hômyô-in, a small branch temple of Miidera, just outside of Kyoto, residing there for short periods and donating personal items such as telescopes and globes to the temple. In 1885, Fenollosa and Bigelow received Buddhist monastic names from Sakurai Keitoku (1834-1885) of Hômyô-in; Fenollosa was granted the name Teishin.

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, becoming the first curator of Oriental art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He divorced his first wife in 1895 and married Mary McNeil Fenollosa (née McNeill) within the same year. This scandal led to him being ousted from his position at the Museum. Okakura would later be named to replace him. In the meantime, Fenollosa returned to Japan, where he and Okakura founded a new "Japan Painting Association" (Nihon Kaiga Kyôkai).

Following his death in 1908 (in London, while on the way to Japan), Fenollosa was buried at Hômyô-in. Figures such as Gaston Migeon, Laurence Binyon, Arthur Wesley Dow, and Charles Lang Freer donated funds for the gravestones. Graves for Machida Hisanari (1838-1898), first head of the Tokyo National Museum, and Bigelow (1850-1926) stand in the same graveyard.

Following Fenollosa's death, 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.