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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Although Frank Lloyd Wright persistently denied any influence from Japanese architecture he did however acknowledge a significant debt to Japanese ‘art’, in particular to the Japanese woodblock print:
The print is more autobiographical than you might imagine. If Japanese prints were to be deducted from my education I don’t know what direction the whole might have taken.
Given its importance to his ‘education’, Wright’s introduction to Japanese prints must have been a major, and one would imagine memorable, turning-point in his career. Yet, curiously this pivotal event remains something of a mystery, as does Wright’s rapid assimilation of expertise in a field so remote from his background and training. There seems to be a considerable gap between ‘Frank Wright’, a nineteen-year-old engineering student from rural Wisconsin, and Frank Lloyd Wright, respected connoisseur of Ukiyo-e. Rather conspicuously Wright himself provided little or no information with which to bridge this gulf, and in the absence of any explanation from him, two principal theories have developed as to how he might have been first introduced to Oriental art.
1 Wright, F. L., An Autobiography (New York, 1977), p. 228 Google Scholar.
2 The vast majority of the official Japanese fine art exhibits listed at the Chicago Exposition were of the traditional school of painting. Only five Japanese exhibits were listed in the ‘Prints’ section of the official catalogue of the fine arts department, and of these there were only three ‘colored prints from woodcuts’. There is a possibility that Ukiyo-e might have been displayed ‘unofficially’ at the Japanese Teahouse at the Exposition, but there seems to be no evidence to confirm this. The Official Catalogue of The World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, 1893), part X, Department K, Fine Arts, Nos 71-73.
3 Grant Manson was first to draw attention to Joseph Silsbee’s collecting of Far Eastern art when in 1958 he referred to Silsbee having a ‘Japanese pillar print’ hanging beside his living-room fireplace. Clay Lancaster subsequently confirmed this when he referred to photographs of Silsbee’s home in the November 1890 issue of The Inland Architect showing several pieces of Oriental art including the Kakemono. See, Manson, Grant C., Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910: The first Golden Age (New York, 1958), 37 Google Scholar, also, Lancaster, Clay, The Japanese Influence in America (New York, 1963)Google Scholar.
4 In January 1903 Fenollosa was in the midst of one of his frequent lecture-tours of the Midwest, writing from Minneapolis to his close friend Charles Lang Freer he ended his letter:
It will perhaps be safer for you to direct your answer to the care of my cousin in Chicago, with whom I shall stay for a few days — Feb ist to 5th —
Care of J. Lyman Silsbee Edgewater, Chicago.See Seiichi Yamaguchi’s Unpublished letters of Ernest Francisco Fenollosa to Charles Lang Freer (1977) p. 20; idem, Ernest Fenollosa Bijutsu Ronbunshu (Tokyo, Chuo Koron Shuppan, 1988). Subsequent research has shown that Joseph Silsbee was indeed Fenollosa’s first cousin, their common grandfather being William Silsbee (1779-1833). The two boys grew up ‘within a stone’s throw of one another’ in Salem, Massachusetts, from where they both went on to Harvard, although Silsbee had graduated and moved down the road to study architecture at MIT by the time his younger cousin Fenollosa arrived in Cambridge to begin his studies in philosophy in the fall of 1870; see Fenollosa, , Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art (London, 1912), preface, p. xiii Google Scholar.
5 Fenollosa, Ernest, ‘Truth of Fine Arts’ Meiji Bunka Zenshu (Tokyo, 14 May 1882, Nihon Kyononsha 1928-30), pp. 159-75Google Scholar.
6 Wright’s earliest connection with Silsbee has been traced to the second half of 1885 when Wright worked for Silsbee on the interior of his uncle Jenkin Lloyd Jones’s Unity Chapel in Helena Valley, Wisconsin; see, Hines, Thomas S., ‘The Madison Years: Records versus Recollections’, The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Winter 1967, pp. 109-19Google Scholar, also Hasbrouck, W. R., ‘The Earliest Work of Frank Lloyd Wright’, The Prairie School Review, Fourth Quarter 1970, pp. 14–16 Google Scholar.
7 See note 4.
8 Frank Lloyd Wright, ‘The Print and The Renaissance’, Nov. 1917, unpublished manuscript (copyright The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation 1990. Courtesy of The Frank Lloyd Wright Memorial Foundation). I should like to thank Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, for permission to quote from this manuscript and for his help over several years.
9 Indeed Fenollosa’s name first came to the fore in Oriental art circles as a result of his scathing criticism of Frenchman Louis Gonse’s chapter on Japanese painting in the latter’s 1883 publication L’Art Japonais. Fenollosa described it as ‘a Hokusai crowned pagoda of generalisations’, implying that Gonse’s view of Japanese painting was grossly distorted since it was based mainly on prints which did not represent the mainstream of Japanese pictorial art, and indeed were not even considered art by the Japanese establishment; see, Gonse, Louis, L’Art Japonais (Paris, 1883)Google Scholar, also, Fenollosa, Ernest, ‘Review of Gonse’s chapter on Japanese Painting’, reprinted from The Japan Weekly Mail, July 12th 1885 (Boston, 1885)Google Scholar.
10 Wright’s reference to these ‘first prints’ obtained from Fenollosa as ‘the narrow decorative form ‘Hashira kake’ seems significant, since in a later piece on prints he appears to have classified ‘Hashira Kake’ and ‘Kakemono’ together on the basis that they were both long and narrow types of vertical print; ‘Another special type within the main group is the Hashera kake or slender kakemono for the wooden posts or pillars of the Japanese house. . . ‘; see Wright, Frank Lloyd, Introduction to, The Frank Lloyd Collection of Japanese Antique Prints (The Anderson Galleries, 1927)Google Scholar. In fact Kakemono and Hashira kake are quite distinct types of print but if Wright, initially at least, didn’t distinguish between the two, then the ‘first prints’ he obtained from Fenollosa may well have actually been Kakemono rather than Hashira kake, i.e. the same type as the one photographed in Joseph Silsbee’s home.
11 In May 1893 Fenollosa delivered a speech entitled ‘Japan’s Position in World Art’ at the opening of the Japanese Fine Art exhibit at the Chicago Exposition; see, Yamaguchi, Seiichi, Ernest Fenollosa: A Life Devoted to the Advocacy of Japanese Art (Tokyo, Sanseido, 1982)Google Scholar.
12 Fenollosa also published an article on the Japanese fine art exhibit at the Exposition in which he modestly played down his own involvement in its preparation whilst paying tribute to that of his friend and former student Okakura:
Candor compels one first of all to say that to Mr Kakuzo Okakura the director of the Fine Arts Academy, more than any other one man is the credit for this wonderful Japanese exhibit due. The wise touch of his advice is everywhere felt from the architectural casket which reproduces the interesting proportions and decorations of Biodoin Temple at Uji founded in the eleventh century to the new developments in shape and glaze of the humblest pottery.
See, Ernest Fenollosa, ‘Contemporary Japanese Art: with examples from the Chicago Exhibit’, Century Magazine, August 1893, pp. 57-81.
13 Fenollosa gave a series of five lectures on Japanese art at The Art Institute in the autumn of 1894; see The Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1894-1901, The Burnham Library, The Art Institute of Chicago. Wright’s fellow Chicago print collector Frederick William Gookin, as well as being a highly respected connoisseur of Far Eastern Art himself, was also a close friend of both Edward Morse and Ernest Fenollosa. Indeed Gookin actually sponsored Fenollosa’s lectures at The Art Institute of Chicago in 1894, as evidenced by a letter from the Art Institute Director W. M. R. French written to Gookin in September 1904:
Dear Mr Gookin
should like to bring Professor Morse of Salem here to lecture upon Japanese art. The expense is rather more than the Art Institute can bear unassisted ... I remember some years ago you pretty nearly shouldered the Fenollosa lectures . . .
Letter from Art Institute Director W. M. R. French to Frederick Gookin dated 4 September 1904, ‘The William M. R. French papers’, Archives of the Art Institute of Chicago, Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
14 Gookin wrote the introduction to Fenollosa’s first book on prints; see Fenollosa, Ernest, The Masters ofUkiyo-e (New York, 1896)Google Scholar.
15 See note 4.
16 On 4 August 1904 Fenollosa wrote to his friend Charles Lang Freer describing the response to his recent ‘lectures at the University of Chicago:
My lectures here at the University have proved such a success that a kind furor seems to have awakened in the city. It may lead to a petition, backed by subscription from several hundred citizens and Professors that President Harper authorise my great course of 24 lectures on Asiatic Culture and its meaning for us, to be given at the University this Winter. I think it would really be something of a national, not to say international event.
Yamaguchi, Seiichi, ‘Unpublished letters of Ernest Fenollosa to Charles Lang Freer, (Tokyo, 1977)Google Scholar; also Yamaguchi, Seiichi, Ernest Fenollosa Bijutsu Ronbunshu, (Tokyo, Chuo Koron Shuppan, 1988)Google Scholar.
17 Wright, F. L., The Japanese Print (Chicago, 1912), p. 3 Google Scholar.
18 E. Fenollosa, ‘Comments on the unfinished Report of the Fine Arts Commission of 1887’, Fenollosa Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard. By permission of the Houghton Library.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Wright, F. L., An Autobiography, pp. 125–27.Google Scholar
