Japanese culture has been able to inspire thousands of artists of all ages with his tales of legend or that special way of understanding illustration, which has led us to artistic works by well-known Japanese artists. Around here we have tried to bring some from time to time.
A rich visual story that can now be downloaded from Smithsonian, which has released more than 1.100 historical Japanese texts from the collections of two great collectors. You have them available for free from the network, so let's get to know a little about them.
Conclusion Charles Lang Freer and Robert O. Muller, The Collectors that these very visual historical texts have gone digital. The former is a railroad magnate and the latter an art dealer. Lang began with his collection when he retired back in 1899, thanks to his friendship with the painter James McNeil Whistler and an art scholar known as Ernest Fenollosa. In his love for Asian art, he led him to donate his private collection to the government.
Muller too brought his passion for Japanese art after discovering woodblock prints in New York in the 30s. He then began amassing a large collection of Japanese art until his death in 2003. He donated 4.000 of those works, as well as numerous documents to the Smithsonian.
Thanks to the passion of these two men, today we can access the development of Japanese literature since the Edo and Meji periods, which go from 1600 to 1912. More than 1.000 digitized works by Free and another 67 from Muller's archive in total.
The web is available from this link, and you will allow access to a historical archive in the form of images that can be used freely. A great time to illustrate a very nice shirt or a cushion for your living room through platforms known to all such as Etsy.