Preliminary Findings about the “Okulich” Collection of Chinese Popular Prints (MAE No. 3676) in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (The Kunstkamera)

Abstract

There are several collections of Chinese popular woodblock prints nianhua in the fund of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, Russian Academy of Sciences (the Kunstkamera) acquired from different collectors. The paper addresses the so-called Okulich collection (MAE No. 3676) consisting of 250 original titles, most of which possess undoubted artistic value. According to the dated sheets, the prints were produced in the last years of the 19th century, and no later than 1904. We only know that, in 1928, a man named Okulich donated these prints to the Kunstkamera. Two groups of paintings from this collection are discussed in more detail: a series of prints that represent illustrations for the main Chinese textbook The Thousand Character Essay (Qian zi wen), and those named xiaojiaochang nianhua printed in Shanghai in the early 20th century. Their scrutiny allows us to conclude that the collector was both serious and skillful in selecting sheets for this collection: apart from being fluent in Chinese, he was a connoisseur of Chinese traditional culture and lived in China for a long time. We discovered a large family with surname Okulich who lived in China in the first half of the last century, and contacted a member of this family, but she was unable to help us with identifying the potential collector.