A POLE IN THE COUNTRY OF BOXERS. ON THEDONATION OF COL. JAGNIĄTKOWSKI TO THENATIONAL MUSEUM IN WARSAW

Abstract

The paper presents the results of provenancestudies related to the donation of Władysław Jagniątkowski(1856–1930) and his wife to the National Museum inWarsaw. Presented to the Museum in 1930, the collectionof heritage pieces contains objects from China and Vietnamwhere the donor was based as a soldier of France’s colonialtroops fighting to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. Basedon untypical sources: texts written by Jagniątkowski, theAuthors analyse the circumstances under which the collectionwas amassed. The many-sided contextualization ofthe donation grounded in the investigated texts yields thehypotheses on the impact of the donor’s personal experiencesand colonial conditioning on the provenance of thehistoric pieces. The research into the provenance of theJagniątkowskis’ donation serves as a good example of potentialchallenges faced by individuals aiming at conductinginvestigation to present a full provenance of museumobjects. It also forms part of the increasingly more popularresearch into and verification of Western collections ofChinese art amassed during the Boxer Rebellion.