Introduction to the Collection

Edward Burr Van Vleck's interest in Japanese prints began with the gift of a
print from his sister Jane Van Vleck around 1899. By 1910 he had received nine
more prints from his sister Anna and had bought one on his own. His first
purchases of Japanese prints before 1916 were sporadic, and by his own
admission, uninformed, but in that year he "began avowedly the formation of a
collection by the purchase . . . of the collection of Mrs. J. Harriot Goodell, wife
of Thomas Goodell, Professor of Greek at Yale University." Of these he would
later say that although some were copies and others were supplanted in his
collection by prints in better condition, "the collection was an education, giving
an opportunity to acquaint myself with the work of many artists."
The growth of the collection shows that Van Vleck was an apt student; in
1940 when he stopped collecting, his collection numbered around four thousand
prints. The prints were divided into two groups, one which Van Vleck had
brought into his thorough cataloguing system, with another thousand mostly of
duplicates and prints of doubtful authorship. Because Van Vleck was a rigorous
record-keeper, we can trace his buying and selling of prints through the
notebooks he kept. His own deep interest in the works he had collected is
reflected in the care with which he researched and recorded his discoveries about
prints in his collection.
He kept close track of the location of each print in the numerous cabinets in
which he stored the collection, and he kept a list of the books and auction
catalogues which he used in his research. He recorded his expenses on account
of the collection for mounting, boxes, and labels. Perhaps most interesting is the
set of notebooks which records his research on each print in his "official"
collection. (Excluded from the "official" collection are prints of lesser quality,
duplicates of works already documented, or prints which were simply never fully
researched and so do not appear in his research notes.) The usual entry in the
research notebooks includes an identification of the print and information
concerning the work or its creator which he culled from his books on Japanese
prints. There is also often a brief appraising comment on the quality or rarity of
the print by various authorities who viewed the collection. Sometimes as
succinct as "Metzgar says OK," the comments are entered over the years as each
visiting expert offered an opinion. In some entries, as many as four people
comment on the print's quality or probable authenticity. For example for a
print by Kiyomasu (1980.2492) the notebook entry runs as follows:
Tan-ye (i.e. red lead) print. Unsigned. as woman putting her comb into her
hair. Black back of mirror below. Purchased in Kyoto, Oct. 8, 1928 fromJ.
Matsuke for 65 yen=$31.50. Matsuke said that the figure was an inset. This
explains absence of any signature or inscription. Sato, to whom I subsequently
took the print, attested its genuine character, Matsuk[e] said that he was pretty
sure Kiyomasu was the designer of the print. This and no. 503 were the only
Tanyes I could find in Japan, save one shown me at Nikko (later again) in which
the red lead was an altogether too vivid modern addition.

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