JOSIAH CONDER (1852-1920) KAWANABE KYOSAI (1831-1889) DAVID NEWMAN (1936-2012) 19TH & 20TH CENTURY

JOSIAH CONDER (1852-1920) KAWANABE KYOSAI (1831-1889) DAVID NEWMAN (1936-2012) 19TH & 20TH CENTURY An extensive collection of paper ephemera, letters, photographs and other material relating to Josiah Conder, his family, Kawanabe Kyosai, and other subjects, including several albums comprising photographs of Conder and his relatives c.1910, many taken while they were living in Japan and featuring interiors decorated with artworks by Kyosai, the archive assembled by David Newman (d.2012) in the 1980s-90s and including a large number of letters he exchanged with Conder's descendants, showing his efforts to trace Kyosai's paintings once owned by the family. (a lot) Provenance: formerly the David and Paula Newman collection, sold on behalf of the executors. Josiah Conder (1852-1920) was a British architect and an 'oyatoi gaikokujin', a foreign advisor to the Meiji Government, sometimes also referred to as the 'Father of modern Japanese architecture'. Conder was hired in 1877 as Professor of Architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering, and Architect to the Public Works Department. The Meiji Government commissioned many European-style buildings as part of its aim to Westernize Japanese society and cities. Conder was hired to supervise the building work and train Japanese students in this European style of architecture. After his contract with the Japanese Government ended, Conder decided to remain in Japan and set up his own company. His most famous constructions include the Ueno Imperial Museum (Tokyo), the Rokumeikan (Tokyo), the Bank of Japan (Tokyo), the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum (Tokyo), Christ Church (Yokohama), and many other public structures and private houses in European style. Conder was fascinated by the arts and culture of his adopted country, and notably wrote books about Japanese landscape gardening and flowers. He enjoyed Kabuki theatre and ikebana (flower arrangement), and he studied traditional Japanese painting under the master painter Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889). Kyosai nicknamed Conder Kyôei (‹Å‰p), the second character meaning 'Britain'. Conder was by the artist's side when he died in 1889, and he later published in 1911 the first work in English dedicated to his art ('Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyosai'). Conder owned a large number of paintings by his friend and mentor, and many of these are visible in the photographs offered as part of lot 157. Some of these paintings are now in museum collections around the world, and others are currently on display at the Royal Academy of Art, London, until 19th June 2022 as part of the exhibition Kyosai: The Israel Goldman Collection.