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Charles Lang Freer and the “Discovery” of Sōtatsu

“After much dickering of a most exasperating nature, I bought a pair of six-fold screens by Sotatsu.… [The dealer’s] original price was ten thousand dollars but I cut his prices exactly in half.”
—Charles Lang Freer writing about Waves of Matsushima, October 18, 1906

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), the founder of the Freer Gallery of Art, was without peer as a collector of Japanese art. His route to this artistic tradition emerged from his friendship with American artist James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who inspired Freer to make five visits to Japan. Among his many acquisitions, none rival the paintings by Tawaraya Sōtatsu (active circa 1600–40). Freer perhaps first became aware of the artist through an interest in ceramics by Sōtatsu’s creative partner, Hon’ami Kōetsu (1558–1637). That led to a fairly rapid series of purchases, culminating in two pairs of screens—Dragons and Clouds, purchased in 1905, and Waves at Matsushima, purchased in 1906. Both now rank as undisputed masterworks.

Freer purchased the Waves at Matsushima screens from Kobayashi Bunshichi (1861–1923), a Japanese dealer who was particularly attuned to the collector’s developing taste for Sōtatsu. In 1906, he persuaded Freer that he had found a masterpiece, which led to the delivery of the Matsushima screens to the American’s residence in Detroit that October. True to form as a hard bargainer, Freer halved the price requested by the dealer. For more on the collector’s interest in Japan, see Freer and Japan’s Modern Art.