A Pole in the Country of Boxers. On the Donation of Col. Jagniątkowski to the National Museum in Warsaw

• Authors: Magdalena Pinker , Joanna Popkowska

Abstracts

EN

The paper presents the results of provenance studies related to the donation of Władysław Jagniątkowski (1856–1930) and his wife to the National Museum in Warsaw. Presented to the Museum in 1930, the collection of heritage pieces contains objects from China and Vietnam where the donor was based as a soldier of France’s colonial troops fighting to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. Based on untypical sources: texts written by Jagniątkowski, the Authors analyse the circumstances under which the collection was amassed. The many-sided contextualization of the donation grounded in the investigated texts yields the hypotheses on the impact of the donor’s personal experiences and colonial conditioning on the provenance of the historic pieces. The research into the provenance of the Jagniątkowskis’ donation serves as a good example of potential challenges faced by individuals aiming at conducting investigation to present a full provenance of museum objects. It also forms part of the increasingly more popular research into and verification of Western collections of Chinese art amassed during the Boxer Rebellion.

Keywords

EN

provenance; China; Vietnam; Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901); Władysław Jagniątkowski (1856–1930); Magdalena Jagniątkowska (1866–1944); artistic craftsmanship; donations

• Publisher: Krajowy Ośrodek Badań i Dokumentacji Zabytków
• Journal: Muzealnictwo
• Year: 2023
• Volume: 64
• Pages: 98-105

Dates

published

2023

Contributors

author

Magdalena Pinker

• University of Warsaw
• National Museum in Warsaw

author

Joanna Popkowska

• National Museum in Warsaw

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/01.3001.0053.8792

Biblioteka Nauki

27689118