Burnt, botched and lost: Victoria’s silk paintings finally go on show
A PAIR of “lost” Japanese silk paintings sent to Queen Victoria in 1860 are to be put on display for the first time after surviving fire, botched repairs with newspaper and the poor cataloguing of an inattentive archivist.
The fold-screen paintings were thought to have been lost more than a century ago, but are now to go on show at Buckingham Palace after they were rediscovered in the Royal Collection.
The original eight screens intended as a gift for Victoria from Japan were damaged by a fire shortly before they were to be shipped.
They were then hastily re-created as a pair by the artist.
Later, while at Windsor Castle, wear and tear on the silk screen was patched up with fragments of Victorian railway timetables.
Once in the Royal Collection, they were all but lost again after being wrongly catalogued as “Japanese works by an unidentified artist”, with their true historical significance ignored.
Curators of the Royal Collection Trust raised the possibility that they might still exist during research for the Japan: Courts and Culture exhibition, and Dr Rosina Buckland, curator of the Japanese Collections at the British Museum, translated the artist’s signature on the two screens.
Rachel Peat, the exhibition’s curator, said: “After decades of believing these important gifts were lost, this rediscovery is extraordinarily significant. The screen paintings marked a new era of diplomatic engagement between Japan and Britain and brought the vivid beauty of Japan’s changing seasons right to the heart of the British court.
“I’m delighted that visitors will see them on display for the first time, just as they might first have been admired by Queen Victoria.”
The screen paintings depict different seasons, showing Mount Fuji in the spring with cherry blossoms, and the scenic Miho no Matsubara area of the Miho Peninsula covered by pine trees and autumnal red maple trees. The pieces formed part of the first diplomatic gift between Japan and Britain in almost 250 years.
Eight pairs of screen paintings were sent by Tokugawa Iemochi, the shogun, shortly after Japan’s reopening to the West, following more than two centuries of deliberate isolation.
The gift to Queen Victoria marked a landmark treaty that reopened seven Japanese ports and cities to British trade and allowed a British diplomat to reside in Japan for the first time.