Object details
Object number
v.1.a.4.6
Creator(s)
Isabella Stewart Gardner
(New York, 1840 - 1924, Boston)
Title
Travel Album: Japan, Volume I
Date
1883
Medium
Bound album including collected photographs, found papers, pressed botanicals, and pen and ink annotations
Dimensions
12 9/16 x 10 9/16 x 1 7/8 in. (31.9 x 26.8 x 4.8 cm)
Signatures, inscriptions, and markings
Inscribed in ink in Isabella Stewart Gardner's hand on the third page: Japan - / I.S. Gardner. / 1883 / Volume I.
Commentary
Isabella Stewart Gardner kept thorough records of her travels in the form of travel albums. Isabella and her husband visited Japan in 1883, where they traveled for months along already-well-worn tourist pathways. Japan had a long history of domestic tourism, and by the 1870s European and American travelers—referred to as “globetrotters” by Japanese people—were a common sight along these routes. Photographs like the ones Gardner purchased and pasted in this album were part of the Japanese tourist experience, both for domestic and international visitors.
Many photographers active in nineteenth-century Japan were European and specifically created images catering to foreign tourists’ conceptions of Japan as an exotic space. Page 29 shows typical subjects, including a temple and a tattooed laborer. A close examination reveals that many of the tattoos were in fact painted on the photograph after the fact. This is unsurprising given that tattoos were outlawed for Japanese citizens in 1872.
Bibliography
Alan Chong and Noriko Murai. Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2009), pp. 104-151, ill.
Stacy Perman. "Diary of a Somebody". Patek Philippe (Vol. 3, no. 12, 2015), pp. 44-49, ill.
Jessica Chloros, "Isabella Stewart Gardner Takes to Jiu Jitsu," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 26 May 2020, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/isabella-stewart-gardner-takes-jiu-jitsu
Alex Eliopoulos, "Isabella and Okakura Kakuzō's Impactful Friendship," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 10 May 2022, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/isabella-and-okakura-kakuzos-impactful-friendship
David Odo. "Deceptive Intimacy: Isabella Stewart Gardner's 1883 Japan Travel Albums" in Diana Seave Greenwald and Casey Riley (ed.). Fellow Wanderer: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Travel Albums. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2023), pp.161-177, figs. 6, 9. Diana Seave Greenwald and Casey Riley (ed.). Fellow Wanderer: Isabella Stewart Gardner's Travel Albums. Exh. cat. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2023), pp. 180-185, 207, plates 38-40, no. 7.
David Odo, "Deceptive Intimacy: Isabella Stewart Gardner’s 1883 Japan Travel Albums," Inside the Collection (blog), Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 21 March 2023, https://www.gardnermuseum.org/blog/deceptive-intimacy-isabella-stewart-gardners-1883-japan-travel-albums
Gallery
Vatichino
Rights and reproductions
The use of images, text, and all other media found on this website is limited. Please review Rights and Reproductions for details.