Amritsar 1916

Amritsar 1916 records Bartlett's encounter with the sacred Sikh city in Punjab, home to the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple, which sits at the center of a reflecting pool known as the Amrit Sarovar, from which the city takes its name. This drawing captures Bartlett's direct observational response to the city before the images were translated into the more formal woodblock medium.

The 1916 date places this work during Bartlett's extensive Indian travels, which produced some of the most geographically adventurous images in the history of artists working with Japanese printmaking techniques. As a drawing, this piece reveals Bartlett's working process: the on-site sketches and studies that would later inform his carefully composed woodblock prints. The immediacy of drawing, with its capacity to record fleeting impressions of light, movement, and architectural detail, provided the raw material from which Bartlett would construct his more deliberate printed compositions.