by Bertha Lum
$1,000–$8,000. Snow and night scenes tend to command premium prices for this artist. Key value factors: Bertha Lum's status as a pioneering Western woodblock printmaker gives her work historical value. Her Art Nouveau-influenced prints are particularly sought after.
Dated 1907, this color woodcut titled "Evening" captures the transitional hour when daylight recedes and lamplight or moonlight takes over. Lum made this print during her early period of active woodblock production, just a few years after her initial training in Japan. The evening setting requires careful management of dark tones — a technical challenge in water-based woodblock printing, where deep values are built through multiple passes rather than a single heavy application of ink. Lum handles this by layering transparent washes of color, allowing the paper to breathe through even in shadow areas. The result evokes twilight rather than full darkness, that liminal interval rich with possibility that has long attracted printmakers and painters working in the Japanese tradition.
Woodblock print
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Evening was created by Bertha Lum in 1907.
Evening depicts night scenes.
Evening measures 32.7 × 10.6 cm.
