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Irish Arts Review Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art Author(s): Audrey Whitty Source: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 25, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), pp. 118-121 Published by: Irish Arts Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20493418 . Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:17 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Irish Arts Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Arts Review (2002-). http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:17:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Page 1: Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art

Irish Arts Review

Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian ArtAuthor(s): Audrey WhittySource: Irish Arts Review (2002-), Vol. 25, No. 4 (Winter, 2008), pp. 118-121Published by: Irish Arts ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20493418 .

Accessed: 12/06/2014 21:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Irish Arts Review is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Irish Arts Review(2002-).

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.55 on Thu, 12 Jun 2014 21:17:15 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art

I ALBERT BENDER: A DUBLINER'S COLLECTION OF ASIAN ART

EXHIBITION

Albert Bender:

A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art

AUDREY WHITTY discusses highlights from the National Museum's principal

long-term exhibition, beginning this winter, which focuses on the rare Asian objects

d'art donated by philanthropist Albert Bender in the early 1930s

1 Head of a Bodhisattva

c. 1600AD, late Ming Dynasty,

Shaanxi Province, China

2 UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE 100

Famous Places of the Eastern

Capital Myojin Shrine at Kanda

c.1832-39 Japan

3 UTAGAWA HIROSHIGE 100

Famous Views of Edo,

Fireworks at Ryogoku 1858,

Japan

E.

T h his month a major exhibition of the Asian art collection given by one of the

first benefactors to the Irish State, Albert

M Bender (1866-1941) opened at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks. This

long-term exhibition has been several years in plan

ning and showcases for the first time since the 1970s

the Museum's most important Asian art collection.

Albert Bender was bom in Dublin, the son of Rabbi

Philip Bender and Augusta Bremer. He went to

primary school at 73 Lower Mount Street

where his father was a teacher and taught Jews

and Christians, a rare occurrence in 19th-century Ireland. Albert Bender emigrated to San Francisco at the age

of thirteen where his uncle, William H Bremer, a shipping and insurance broker gave him work. By the age of

twenty he had set up as an independent insurance agent and went on to amass great wealth.

Bender was interested in three main areas of collecting; Modern art, books and Asian art. Between 1931

and 1936, he donated approximately 260 Asian objects d'art to the National Museum of Ireland in hon

our of his mother Augusta. Artistically, the collection remains one of the most valuable of all Asian

material in the Museum. Such a benevolent act in the early years of Irish independence was unique,

and later paved the way for other private collections to be donated to the State.

The then director of the National Museum, Austrian archaeologist Adolf Mahr, was Bender's main

point of contact throughout the donations. The collection is renowned particularly for its Tibetan

Buddhist thangkas (religious paintings on textile) and Japanese prints (Ukiyo-e). The National Museum's Bender collection is singular as being his main collection given to a European institution, despite pres

sure from the Louvre to acquire the Tibetan Buddhist thangkas of the Arhats (disciples) of Buddha.

The first of the Bender series of donations dates to December 1931 when he sent his collection of

twenty-one 18th-century Tibetan Buddhist thangka paintings of the Arhats of Buddha to the National

Museum. Bender stated in correspondence that the dealer who acquired them on his behalf had never

discovered such a complete collection of paintings from the same temple in his forty-five years' experi

ence. They were said at that time to be from the Sun Su Province of China (probably modem day Gansu

Province where there is still a significant Tibetan population). Bender had initially been approached by

the Louvre, but after discussion with the Irish writers George Russell (AE) and Walter Starkie thought it

more appropriate to offer them to the National Museum. The title of Arhat is given to those disciples of

I 1 8 |I R I S h1 A RTS R E V IE W W I NTE R 2 0 0 8

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Page 3: Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art

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Page 4: Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art

EL ALBERT BENDER: A DUBLINER'S COLLECTION OF ASIAN ART

EXHIBITION

~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ..

.4Z ~ r.~

Budda wh areon the path towards Nirvana. There are sixteen Arhats in the Indian series, but in the Tibetan and Chinese there are two additional Arhats (Dharmatala and Hashang)

making eighteen. The National Museum's twenty-one thangkas consist of fifteen Arhats (two of which are represented twice) and Four Guardians (Lokapalas) of the Four Quarters of the

World (North, South, East and West). Those chosen by f i Buddha to be Arhats are charged with preserving his teach ings and helping all living beings.

Generally a thangka is a painting on cloth that can be _______ rolled up. Firstly the piece of cotton is stretched on a frame and is covered with a mixture of chalk and glue. After drying it is polished with a shell and the outline of the - --. painting is drawn either in black or red. The pigment used comes from vegetables. The_ large size and iconographical complexity of Z^ the Bender collection's thangkas would have _ - required the combined work of several artists. . ^__^

Often seen in the West as colourful wall ,s ? 46 * hangings, to Tibetan Buddhists these religious e paintings contain a beauty which is believed ~ -._ 4~'2 to be divine. The Buddhist text from which' -af L knowledge of all sixteen Arhats is likely to be "*' '-' '. v u....^ derived is the Record of the Duration of the Th_ _7e- ..1'177... .t Law by the great Arhat Nandimitra. : '

The thangka illustrating Upasaka , .. . ..... 4> Dharmatala (Fig 7) translates as 'one who ^ '}^

120 1> ,,, 7

increases Buddha's teachings'. He is found only in the Chinese and Tibetan series of Eighteen Arhats, and is regarded as a lay

man who was servant to the original Indian group of Sixteen. He

is renowned for his wisdom and learning. A vase and flywhisk

are held in his hands and a tiger accompanies him. All twenty

one thangkas from the Bender collection display strong Chinese artistic influence, and are emblematic of a Sino-Tibetan style

that reached a climax under the Qianlong Emperor (1736-95). This is evident in the landscape and fruit motifs seen in the

background of each one of the thangkas.

Another area of art covered in the exhibition is that of

Japanese woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e) of the 18th and 19th cen

turies. The artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) is particularly well represented. Even though Hiroshige was active in producing work from 1818 onwards, it was only in 1830 that he changed his

subject matter from that of the figurative to landscape with the

appearance of his 'Famous Places in the Eastern Capital' series.

The work shown here entitled Myojin Shrine in Kanda (Fig 2) is

from this series. Hiroshige was highly regarded primarily for the way in which he conveyed atmospheric details, such as changing

seasons through the depiction of rain, snow or wind. His last

series of prints was '100 Famous Views of Edo' (1856-58) and an

excellent example from this series is Fireworks at Ryogoku (Fig 3).

In Fireworks at Ryogoku the actual texture of the wood from the

woodblock involved in its printing is visible in the dark-coloured night sky. Altogether Bender donated approximately eighty Japanese prints to the National Museum and forty of them will be

displayed in the exhibition. Because the exhibition is long term,

it is envisaged that both the Japanese ukiyo-e and Tibetan

Buddhist thangkas will be rotated over time so the public will

have an opportunity to see the full extent of the collection.

Other highly important objects that form a central part of the

exhibition include a late Ming

Dynasty (c.1600-48AD) head

from a statue of a Bodhisattva

(being approaching Buddhahood) from Shaanxi Province, China

us4 4*,,,,;, w (Fig 1). According to Bender's

dealer, Henry H Hart, 'the bronze

-,,I-" lhead was found in a temple in a AX ff g-A

0 small town in Shaanxi Province,

0 X - , 4/ when the temples were destroyed

at the order of Feng Yu-hsiang in * 4 57l1927, and brought to Peking

[Beijing].' Feng Yu-hsiang was a

Chinese general who held vari

,>kous military positions under the

I w ~ ~ ~ e Qing Dynasty (up to 1911). *Eventually he supported the Nationalists, becoming minis ter of war and vice-chairman of the Executive Yuan [Council] at Nanjing in 1928.

* Another spectacular piece, which like the thangkas, is tex

tile-based, is an important first-degree Daoist Priest's Robe of the l7th-l8th century (Fig 8). The decorative motifs on

Daoist vestments aimed to produce celestial order through

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Page 5: Albert Bender: A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art

the inclusion of astral symbols that linked the earth to the cosmos.

On the back of the robe, symbols for the sun, moon and stars sur

round Heaven, which is depicted as a multi-storied tower encir

cled by gold discs that represent stars. Lower down are placed

four gate-like structures representing the four cardinal points

(directions) of the world. Among the waves at the bottom are

animals related to Daoism that include deer, crane, tortoise,

snake, monster fish (ao) and dragons. The priest who wore this

robe would have become a central focus of ritual, believed to pro

mote harmonious relations with heaven and stability on earth.

Reference will also be made in the exhibition to Bender's cor

respondence with Irish writers and artists of the Celtic Revival.

Amongst the most noteworthy of these were Walter Starkie (of

the Abbey Theatre and Trinity College Dublin), Oliver St John

Gogarty, George Russell (Fig 6), Ella Young, Kathleen O'Brennan

and the entire Yeats family - William, Jack (Fig 5), Lily, and

Elizabeth. Indeed in the case of W B Yeats, Bender took the lib

erty of dispatching books from renowned Californian presses to

Yeats, some of the same examples he later donated to Trinity

College in memory of his father. Yeats made reference to the

exhibition at the National Museum in a letter to Bender: 'Your

bequest to the Museum in Kildare Street is exciting. I spent some

time there during a brief recovery after my first attack of conges

tion of the lungs. I am thinking of your big pictures [thangkas].

They are very well placed.' In 1934, Jack B Yeats gave Bender a

gift of a sketchbook dating to 1899 based on studies from the

Aran Islands (see Irish Arts Review, Winter 2007).

Bender's series of donations to the San Francisco Museum of

Modern Art, which totalled around 800 items, helped form the

nucleus of what has emerged as one of the most respected modem

art museums in the United States. In relation to Albert Bender's

book collecting there is a significant collection of rare American

The priest who wore this robe would have become a central focus of ritual, believed to promote harmonious relations with heaven and stability on earth

printed books in the library of Trinity College Dublin. As with the

National Museum's Bender Collection, this series of donations occurred throughout the 1930s. It includes such publications as W

B Yeats' The Land of Heart's Desire by the Windsor Press; Douglas

Chretien's The Battle Book of the O'Donnells by Samuel T Farquhar

at Berkeley, University of California Press; and Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village by the printer John Henry Nash. Altogether

the Trinty College collection comprises some 495 volumes issued

by private presses mainly at work in California during the years

1920-40. The National Museum of Ireland's collection of Asian art

that Bender donated throughout the 1930s is his most extensive

collection given to a European institution. M

AUDREY WHITTY is Curator of the Albert M Bender exhibition.

'A Dubliner's Collection of Asian Art' National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks,

Dublin, opened 13 November 2008. Photography: Valerie Dowling and Bryan Rutledge. D

WINTER 2008 IRISH ARTS REVIEW 1121

4 Pencil sketch

Albert M Bender

From Some Aspects

of his Life and

Tlmes, 1941. OThe

Grabhorn Press,

San Francisco

5 Letter from Jack B Yeats to Albert

Bender, 15

December 1936,

OMilIsCollege,

California

6 Letter from

George Russell to

Albert Bender, 28

April 1932, OMills

College, California

7 Thangka

illustrating the

Arhat Upasaka

Dharmatala.

18th century

Tibetan-Buddhist,

probably Gansu

Province, China

8 Daoist Priest's

Robe, 17th-18th

century, China

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