Fritz Rumpf Notebooks

Three undated notebooks by artist and educator Friedrich Karl Georg (Fritz) Rumpf (1888-1949). With multiple notes in German and Japanese, and drawings in pencil, ink and wash made during his travels and research in Japan. The notebooks also contain many loose paper scraps and letters, including a draft letter addressed to Felix Tikotin.

Friedrich (Fritz) Karl Georg Rumpf the Younger was the son of the Potsdam painter Fritz Rumpf (1856-1927). He grew up in Potsdam and at 15 studied Japanese from a Japanese officer who attended the military school in Potsdam. After graduating from middle school, he studied at the Royal School of Arts in Berlin. He moved to Japan in 1908, where he studied woodblock printing under Igami Bonkotsu (1875-1933) and was active in the literary society "Pan no Kai." From 1910 he continued his studies in Berlin under the artist Emil Orlik. At the beginning of World War I he was sent to China as a military officer and was taken prisoner following the surrender of Qingdao to the Japanese in 1914. He was a prisoner of war in Oita and Narashino until 1920. In 1931 under Asian art historian Otto Kümmel, he produced a dissertation on the Ise monogatari woodblock print edition of 1608. Rumpf traveled extensively in Japan throughout his career. In 1927-1928 he accompanied the art collector Felix Tikotin (1893-1986) in Japan.

FSA A2015.22

Rumpf, Friedrich Karl Georg, 1888-1949

Japan

Berlin (Germany)

Fritz Rumpf Notebooks

Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives

Collection descriptions

Archival materials

Notebooks

Fritz Rumpf Notebooks, FSA A2015.22. National Museum of Asian Art Archives. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Arranged by notebook, thereafter loose material.

Permission to publish, quote, or reproduce must be secured from the repository.

Notebooks

Collection is open for research.