The collection primarily contains prints, engravings, and books. The majority of the collection highlights the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the 20th centuries through the lens of Europeans. It contains depiction of the subcontinent's peoples, cultures, monuments, religious sites, and religious practices as seen in Dutch, English, French, German, and Italian publications. Among this collection are also some representations of people from other parts of the world.
Arrangement:
The collection is arranged into seven series, beginning with the initial gift in support of the 2014 exhibition, Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India from the Robert J. Del Bontà Collection. Each series represents a grouping selected by the donor and follows the donor's original curation of the material. E or engraving numbers reflect the donor's numbering system.
Series 1: Original gift supporting the exhibition, Strange and Wondrous: Prints of India from the Robert J. Del Bontà Collection in 2014 focusing on ascetics and mendicants.
Series 2: Prints and Engravings relating to the rulers including Timurid and Mughal rulers
Series 3: 16th-17th century prints
Series 4: Engravings and prints from around the world
Series 5: English engravings depicting India
Series 6: Dutch and French engravings of voyages across the world
Series 7: French engravings depicting monuments of India
Biographical / Historical:
Dr. Robert J. Del Bontà was born in 1949. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1978. From 1993 to 2000 he was a research associate and guest curator at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He also curated major exhibitions for the Berkeley Art Museum; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Portland Art Museum; and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He writes and lectures on a wide range of subjects relating to South Asian art including paintings, prints, photographs, popular art, sculptures, and architecture. More recently, he also writes about European prints pertaining to Europe's perception of India and Indo-Portuguese art.
Del Bontà began to collect prints related to South Asia while completing his doctorate in South Asian art history at the University of Michigan in the 1970s. The Robert J. Del Bontà collection contains prints and books depicting people, cultures, religious customs, gods and goddesses, and architecture of Asia, with a specific emphasis on South Asian art.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Permission to reproduce and publish an item from the Archives is coordinated through the National Museum of Asian Art's Rights and Reproductions department. Please contact the Archives in order to initiate this process.
151 commercial stereographs depicting scenes of South Asia. Sources include Underwood and Underwood Publishers; Ricalton; H.C. White Co.; American Stereoscopic Co. and Keystone View Co. Collectively this is a nearly complete complement of photographs of India taken by James Ricalton.
Local Numbers:
E591
FSA A2014.06 2.S
Collection Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Collection Rights:
Permission to reproduce and publish an item from the Archives is coordinated through the National Museum of Asian Art's Rights and Reproductions department. Please contact the Archives in order to initiate this process.
Genre/Form:
Stereoscopic photographs
Stereographs
Collection Citation:
Robert J. Del Bonta Collection, FSA A2014.06. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
2 Copies (Two copies: one bound and one loose., 29 x 22 cm.)
Type:
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Copies
Reports
Photographs
Place:
China
Japan
Angkor Wat (Cambodia)
Date:
1915
Scope and Contents:
A report prepared by archaeologist and art historian Langdon Warner on his travels of 1913-1914 to investigate the founding of an American school of Chinese archaeology to be established in Beijing. Warner's travels included Europe, Japan, Korea, China and Indo-China. Warner spoke with scholars, administrators and officials, and travelled to museums and archaeological sites. Warner traveled with his wife. The report contains two parts; the first being a summary of his travels, and the second, a series of recommendations for the proposed school.
Biographical / Historical:
Langdon Warner was an archaeologist and historian of Asian art in the first half of the 20th century. He was born on August 1, 1881 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and educated at Harvard University, which he graduated from in 1903. Between acting in various positions at museums across the country, most notably the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Harvard Fogg Museum of Art, he travelled extensively in Asia. Including an 1913-14 trip sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution to explore the possibility of founding an American School of Chinese Archaeology in Beijing. Accompanied by his wife, their journey included visits to Europe, Japan, Korea, China, and Indochina. He spoke with scholars, administrators, and officials, and travelled to museums and archaeological sites. He compiled a two-part report: a summary of his travels and a series of recommendations for the proposed school.
During World War II, Warner taught a course on Japanese language, culture, and history to Civil Affairs Officers and acted as a Special Consultant for the U.S. Army's Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program, the so-called "Monuments Men." He created the Official List of Monuments for Japan, China, Korea, and Thailand. Warner spent the summer of 1946 working as an Expert Consultant to the Arts and Monuments Division of the Civil Information and Education Section under the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. Upon his return to Massachusetts, he resumed working at the Fogg Museum of Art until his retirement in 1950. During his career, he wrote numerous books on Asian art such as The Enduring Art of Japan, The Long Old Road in China, and Japanese Sculpture of the Tempyo Period: Masterpieces of the Eighth Century. Warner died on June 9, 1955 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was posthumously awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasures by the Japanese government for his efforts to preserve Japanese art and monuments during and after the war.
Local Numbers:
FSA A1994.07
Other Archival Materials:
Landon Warner Papers, circa late 18th century-1987 (bulk 1900-1959). Houghton Library, Harvard University
Langdon Warner Photograph Collection, 1903-1950. Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Langdon Warner Records, 1916-1929 (bulk 1917-1923). Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives.
Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Harlan Butt, 2009 July 27-28. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
