Carl Schraubstadter Catalogue of Hiroshige Prints typescript (23.3.1.3)

Carl Schraubstadter's Catalogue of Hiroshige Prints typescript, 1936, contains a catalogue raisonné in three volumes. Volume one and two contain ten short chapters (see arrangement) and one chapter comprised of Section 1, listing print titles in alphabetical order under series titles or as single prints, and Section 2, which lists prints under the print style (Byobu, Diptychs, Ebankire, Ehon, etc.). Volume 3 contains two sets of photostats, positive and negative, of publishers' marks and seals. Though copied in 1936, the typescript does not provide a date for when Schraubstadter wrote the catalogue.

The typescript includes handwritten notes by RISD Museum of Art Curator Miriam A. Banks. "Copied in 1936 at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art. References in text are photostats of seals and marks kept with museum copy. This is one of two copies of an important catalogue of Hiroshige prints. It is still unpublished and we are the only institution, so far as I know, that possesses a copy. It covers the complete Hiroshige opus insofar as Oriental scholarship is cognizant of the present time. I have the other copy in my personal possession as guardian for the museum archives(!) since it was made through my own solicitation and persuasion. Miss Banks note."

Banks may have been inspired to obtain the typescript by a recent gift to the Museum of Art. Mrs. Abby A. Rockefeller, Jr. gave the museum nearly 700 color Japanese prints of birds and flowers in 1934. The museum held sixteen exhibitions between 1935-1942 featuring the prints.