William Sturgis Bigelow

William Sturgis Bigelow (c. 1850–1926) was a prominent American collector of Japanese art. The art collection trips he funded in the 1880s helped to form the standards by which Japanese art and culture were appreciated in the West. In 1909, Bigelow was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Third Class, by Emperor Meiji. A trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts (1891-1926), he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1911. Early career Bigelow was the son of Henry Jacob Bigelow, a prominent Boston surgeon. Bigelow received his degree in medicine from Harvard University in 1874 and continued his medical studies in Europe for five years under Louis Pasteur. His primary interest was bacteriology, but when his father pressured him to follow him into surgery, Bigelow abandoned a medical career altogether.