Entrance to Golden Temple, Armistrar

Entrance to Golden Temple, Amritsar presents the approach to the Sikh faith's holiest site, the Harmandir Sahib, whose gold-plated upper stories give it the name by which it is commonly known to Western visitors. The entrance experience is architecturally dramatic: worshippers descend a flight of steps from the surrounding marble walkway to reach the causeway leading across the sacred pool to the temple, a deliberate inversion of the typical approach to a religious building that symbolizes humility.

Bartlett's oban woodblock print captures this passage from the outer world into the sacred precinct, where the reflected gold of the temple shimmers across the water of the Amrit Sarovar. The architectural frame of the entrance gateway creates a compositional structure that directs the eye toward the luminous temple beyond. Bartlett's training as a watercolorist served him in rendering the play of light on gilded surfaces and water, effects that the woodblock printer translated into layered impressions of metallic yellows and aqueous blues.