One hundred years after his death, the American collector who bankrolled a revolution in Japanese painting is getting his due in Nagoya. "Bigelow: The Phantom Collection and the Dawn of Modern Japanese Painting," tracing the Bostonian enchanted by Japanese art, opens October 30 at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and runs through December 13.

William Bigelow (1850–1926) championed nihonga during the Meiji era and laid the foundations of the Japanese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibition focuses on a little-known chapter: after more than 40,000 Japanese artworks and crafts he had gathered crossed to America, a group of them returned to Japan and were dispersed at auction in the early Showa period. These works, long scattered and treasured across the country, are reunited here as the "phantom collection," including Kitagawa Utamaro's "Courtesan and Kamuro" (1789–1801, first-half display), Hokusai's hand-painted ukiyo-e, and Maruyama-Shijo school paintings.

The show also follows Bigelow's role as a patron alongside Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908), the leader of Meiji Japan's painting reform movement. On view are Kano Hogai's Important Cultural Properties "Fudo Myoo" (1887, first half) and "Hibo Kannon" (1888, December 1–13), works by Hashimoto Gaho, and documentation of Bigelow's sustained funding of the nihonga movement after the Kangakai society, including donations at the founding of the Japan Art Institute. Attention also falls on Maeda Kinpo, the Kangakai's only woman painter, represented throughout the run by works including "Lotus Pond and Swallows" (1893).

A final section turns to Bigelow's spiritual life: ordained alongside Fenollosa at Homyo-in temple in Otsu, he became a devout Buddhist, and the exhibition presents works connected to that faith, from Tsurusawa Tanshin's "Flock of Cranes" (1765) to the globe and telescope he gifted the temple. By his will, he rests beside Fenollosa in Homyo-in's cemetery.