Apollo Advent Calendar: Day 18

Apollo is counting down to Christmas by celebrating some of the greatest acquisitions, gifts and bequests of 2013. We’ll take a closer look each day at one of the outstanding objects, works of art or collections shortlisted for the Apollo Awards Acquisition of the Year.

British Museum, London
The Mission of Commodore Perry to Japan, 1854
Onuma Chinzan (calligrapher), painted by Hibata Osuke
Silk, 28.9×1,525cm
Funded with contributions from Brooke Sewell Bequest, JTI Japanese Acquisitions Fund, Friends of the British Museum, Noriko and Shigeru Myojin, Dounia and Sherif Nadar, Adeela Qureshi and Richard de Unger, and Mitsubishi Corporation

The Kanagawa Treaty, agreed between US Commodore Matthew Perry and the Tokugawa shogunate in March 1854, ended over 200 years of Japanese seclusion. This 15m scroll illustrates 16 scenes from the diplomatic visit, many of which display an amusing clash of cultures, in contrast to the formal US documents, which were displayed opposite it at the British Museum this year. The scroll has no narrative text, suggesting it was created for someone directly involved in the events. Popular prints of the subject abound, but this finer work, attributed to Osuke who witnessed the negotiations, is unique in Europe.