BG. Arthur Davison Ficke

10. Illustrated Catalogue of an Exceptionally Important Collection of Rare and Valuable Japanese Color Prints Together with a Few Paintings of the Ukiyoe School. [New York: American Art Association], 1920.

The catalogue prepared by Ficke for the ‘unrestricted public sale’ of his collection of ukiyoe at the American Art Galleries, Madison Square South, New York City, on 10 and 11 February, 1920. More than 600 prints are listed, by all the important artists, each accompanied by a prose description by Ficke. The collection would surely have been among the most important in the world in the first quarter of the century, perhaps the best in private hands, and Ficke’s notes verify again that he was among the foremost contemporary Western experts on the prints. His foreword argues that they ‘are among the most precious products of the aesthetic powers of the human spirit’, and notes that the collection offered is ‘the fruit of fifteen years of search, in Japan, Europe, and America, for such select specimens of the art as seemed worthy to be preserved as a lasting treasure’.