CANTIDAD:

500

RESUMEN

William Sturgis Bigelow (Apr. 4, 1850 – Oct. 5, 1926), philanthropist and prominent collector of Japanese art, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into an influential “Brahmin” family. His father, Henry Jacob Bigelow, was a physician and founder of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and his paternal grandfather Dr. Jacob Bigelow, was a founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His mother, Susan Sturgis Bigelow, was the daughter of Captain William Sturgis, a wealthy merchant in the China trade. Susan died when William was three years old - a loss that had a lasting impact on her son.

In 1871, Bigelow earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard College. Following in his father’s footsteps, he then matriculated at Harvard Medical School to pursue a career in medicine. After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1874, William continued his medical training in Vienna, Strasbourg, and Paris. He studied in Europe for five years before returning to the United States to establish one of the first bacteriological laboratories in the country. When his father pushed him away from bacteriology and towards surgery instead, Bigelow briefly served as a surgeon to outpatients at Massachusetts General Hospital before abandoning a medical career completely.

Bigelow had first begun collecting Japanese art as a student in Paris. In 1882, inspired by a series of lectures, he traveled to Japan and became enamored with the culture. He stayed in the country for seven years and embraced Buddhism. Upon his return, he donated 75,000 objects of Japanese art to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Bigelow contributed financially to a number of projects related to the celebration of Japanese artwork, including the Nihon Bijutsuin ─an art school dedicated to promoting traditional forms of Japanese art. Bigelow was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1911. Japan awarded him the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, with the rank of Commander, the nation’s highest distinction bestowed on persons not in public office.

Throughout his career, Bigelow maintained close friendship with fellow Harvard alumni, including Henry Cabot Lodge (College, 1872) a close friend from childhood, who introduced him to Theodore Roosevelt in 1887. They remained close friends for the rest of their lives, although Bigelow and Cabot Lodge disagreed strongly with Roosevelt’s decision to lead his “Rough Riders” in the American military campaign in Cuba in 1898. Bigelow believed, incorrectly, that his friend’s embrace of jingoism would doom his political career. Two years later, Bigelow was one of many Boston Brahmins who supported the Harvard Summer School for Cuban teachers, donating $500 to the cause.

Bigelow never married and enjoyed the life of a bachelor. Henry Adams described his summer home on a small island off Nantucket as a "a scene of medieval splendor," (Prout) where he entertained men only and provided visitors with fine food and wines and access to his library, containing 3,000 volumes, "spiced with racy French and German magazines” (Prout). Guests wore pajamas, or nothing at all, until dinnertime, when formal dress was required.

He died on October 5, 1926, aged 76. Upon his death, in accordance with his final requests, Bigelow’s remains were cremated with half the ashes buried at Mii-dera, outside Kyoto, and half interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge.


Further Reading

1. Murakata, Akiko. “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow: The Story of a Friendship,” Harvard Library Bulletin XXIII (1), January 1975: 90-108. https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/37364252

2. Prout, Curtis. “William Sturgis Bigelow: Brief Life of an Idiosyncratic Brahmin, 1850-1926,” https://harvardmagazine.com/1997/09/vita.html