The Road to Japan...

This week we have been enjoying a beautiful collection of late-Edo period Japanese works in ink & colour on silk. They show influence of the nanga style of the time, which flourished among artists who considered themselves literati, or intellectuals, and shared an admiration for traditional Chinese culture. The Chinese bird-and-flower painter Yun Shou-ping (1633–1690) was particularly revered by such Japanese artists.

Just as interesting is the paintings' intriguing provenance, formerly belonging to the 'Bright Young Thing' Robert Byron (1905–1941). Byron was a travel writer and art & architectural historian, who was part of the glittering interwar Oxford/London set that included Evelyn Waugh and Harold Acton. Byron is best known for his travelogue 'The Road to Oxiana', a book that documented his travels in the Middle East but was written whilst he was living in Beijing in 1835–6, visiting his friend (and unrequited love) Desmond Parsons. Byron's time in China was somewhat accidental; his great desire was to go to Japan, and his further travels did include Japan, along with America, Russia and Siberia. He met an untimely death in 1941 during World War II when the ship he was on was torpedoed.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION.

Images 4 & 5: Robert Byron, and with Desmond Parsons in China