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Paper short abstract:

The collecting partnership forged between advisor-specialist Jack Hillier (1912-95) and retired mining magnate Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968) is examined through contemporary correspondence, publications and the collection of Japanese prints and printed books they jointly created.

Paper long abstract:

In April 1954, London dealers Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. notified Alfred Chester Beatty (1875-1968) of a collection of six hundred Japanese prints readied for sale. Beatty seized the opportunity and purchased the prints for his growing Library on Dublin's Shrewsbury Road. Seeking to refine this 'ready-made' collection, Beatty then made contact with Jack Hillier (1912-95) who had—in serendipitous fashion—just published his first book on things Japanese, Japanese Masters of the Colour Print (London: Phaidon, 1954).

Over the next decade, a productive collecting partnership was forged between print-specialist Hillier and retired mining magnate Beatty that far exceeded Beatty's more modest original intentions. Initially, Beatty perceived this collection as one that would play an institutional role—part of the legacy he was shaping in Ireland—and not as an area in which he found great personal interest. Caught by Hillier's enthusiasm, however, it was not long before Beatty expanded the scope of his aims to fully embrace Japan's woodblock-printed books. Later, he found his own collecting passion in the luxurious surimono prints prepared for Edo's kyōka poets. Throughout, Hillier's acuity and market knowledge guided the selection of works to form a collection of impressively high quality. At the same time, Hillier was preparing further books and articles that sought to inject new life into the collecting and appreciation of Japan's printed arts more widely.

Drawing together the extensive correspondence between Hillier, Beatty and Beatty's library staff, and the prints and printed books these letters document, this paper examines the balance of the partnership behind this collection and the ambitions it came to embody.