Bidspirit auction | Charles Bartlett ”Khyber Pass” Woodblock

Charles Bartlett ”Khyber Pass” Woodblock Print - Signed in the lower left.  Date: 1916 The image is unframed.    Image: 13 1/2” x 10 1/4”    Condition: Toning to the paper. Acid burn from previous framing and sunlight exposure. The blue and red pigments are bright and vibrant.    Artist Bio: Charles William Bartlett (1860–1940) trained at the Royal Academy Schools and the Academie Julian in Paris under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. In 1913 he set out eastward through India, Ceylon, Java, China and Japan, and in Tokyo in 1915 met the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, the impresario of shin-hanga — the ”new print” movement that married ukiyo-e block-cutting and printing craft to Western modelling, light and perspective. Watanabe published twenty-one woodblock designs from Bartlett's travel subjects in 1916, making him one of the very first Western artists Watanabe published and giving shin-hanga a non-Japanese repertoire. He stopped in Hawaii in 1917 and stayed for life, co-founding the Honolulu Printmakers in 1928.