В пучине бренного мира. Японское искусство и его коллекционер Сергей Китаев - Евгений Семенович Штейнер

the first swallow of spring. (Regrettably, this swallow did “not a summer make” of Japanese art in his country.)[207] Kitaev can be included in the brilliant cohort of Russian collectors of his generation: well-educated and well-heeled representatives of the merchant class, who were more aesthetically open and daring than the nobility and gentry-class collectors, who traditionally gravitated toward European classical art. Kitaev looks like a representative man of his time and means, somewhat effete and in the sway of fashionable things Japanese. He was artistically gifted himself, being an amateur watercolor artist and a man with a refined and fragile nature. Not without reason, Kitaev chose as his “favorite” and “soul-mate” Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892), the last important and innovative ukiyo-e master, who marked the end of the two-centuries-old cultural tradition[208]. An excessively overwrought – to the extent of the macabre and pathological – decadent who suffered from nervous breakdowns, Yoshitoshi died in his early fifties, as would Kitaev in his early sixties, after a series of ruinous outbreaks of psychic malaise.

Not much is known about Kitaev’s life: a dry list of the slowly changing ranks in his personnel file in the Navy archive; brief mentions of his collection in Russian and Japanese newspapers; a few short letters from Kitaev to various officials; and a letter of recollections by his fellow officer (and artist) Pavel Pavlinov (1881–1966), written forty years after their last meeting.

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Tsukioka Yoshitoshi

The Spirit of a Virtuous Woman Sitting under a Waterfall (Seppu no rei taki ni kakaru zu), from the series “New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts” (“Shinkei sanju-rokkaisen”). 1892. Ōban.

On the strip of paper attached at the bottom of the print, Kitaev wrote the version of the story known to him. (translated here from the Russian): “Her husband had been crippled by the enemy. In order to propitiate the gods who might heal him, she vowed to bathe one hundred days in a row in a sacred waterfall, but the enemy killed her. Her ghost informed the husband when it would be feasible to finish off the enemy, and justice was restored: the enemy perished”. Hatsuhana’s husband was crippled when he injured his knee while searching the country for the man who killed his father. Hatsuhana carried him to a sacred waterfall, under which she prayed until she died. Her husband recovered and killed the murderer. Hatsuhana’s ghost then appeared, rising from the waters.

Early Life and Naval Heritage

Sergei Nikolaevich Kitaev was born June 10 (Gregorian calendar: 22), 1864, in the village of Klishino on the Oka River in Ryazan province (now a part of Moscow province), where the Kitaevs had their family estate. He belonged to a well-to-do family bearing the rank of hereditary honorable citizens[209]. Most probably his family made its money from the local sailcloth factory, which had provided sails for the navy since the time of Peter the Great – hence the naval connection of the future collector and his brothers. From the age of fourteen, Kitaev was educated at the Naval School (later renamed Naval Corps) in Saint Petersburg. He graduated in 1884 salutatorian (his name was incised and gilded on the marble Board of Honor). He served as an officer in Saint Petersburg and on the ships of the Pacific fleet until 1905 and, afterward, in Petersburg until 1912. His highest rank in service was Colonel of the Admiralty (“colonel” because in his last years he served on shore), and when he was discharged due to ill-health, he was promoted to the rank of Major General of the Admiralty (a uniquely Russian title). One very blurred photograph of Kitaev from a Japanese newspaper of 1918 is known, as well as a description from a Russian secret police report of 1904: “medium height, a black French-style beard, mustache pointed up, wears a black-rimmed pincenez[210].”

Kitaev exhibited at the Imperial Academy of Arts and in the Society of Watercolor Artists. His elder brother, Vasily Kitaev (1849–1894), was also in the navy and an artist; another brother, Alexander (c. 1852–?), was a naval officer who spent time in Nagasaki and published essays about his Far Eastern travels[211]. Yet another brother, Vladimir (1855–1920), ended his life as an émigré in Japan, and died in Nagasaki.

Original and Growing Collection

There are two long letters written by Kitaev to the previously mentioned Pavel Pavlinov in which he describes his collection and shares his views on Japanese art. These letters, given by Pavlinov to the Pushkin in 1959, and a list (the “Brief List”) in Kitaev’s hand of his collection found in the boxes with his prints, yield an engaging portrait of the collector and outline of his original collection. The letters to Pavlinov were written on the 15th (28) and the 20th of August (2 September), 1916, in anticipation of Kitaev’s selling the collection to the Russian state. While in a generally good state of preservation, the letters are marred with comments and underlinings in ballpoint ink and pencil by an overzealous researcher, presumably Voronova[212].

Kitaev did not limit himself to woodblock prints. In his Brief List he enumerates the following groups: hanging scrolls – 270; screens (including one purportedly by Ogata Kо̄rin [1658–1716] – 4; handscrolls – 12 (including one purportedly by Katsushika Hokusai [1760–1849]); watercolors – 650