Japanese Print by Charles W BARTLETT

Charles William Bartlett (1860–1940) was a British watercolorist and printmaker who collaborated with Tokyo publisher Watanabe Shozaburo to produce shin-hanga prints from approximately 1916 onward. Bartlett supplied original watercolor designs, which Watanabe's skilled craftsmen translated into woodblock form using traditional Japanese carving and printing techniques on washi. The resulting prints have a distinctly hybrid quality: Western compositional sensibility and warm naturalistic color relationships executed in the nishiki-e medium, with all its characteristic properties—flat color fields separated by incised line, bokashi atmospheric gradation, and the absorbent washi surface. Bartlett's subjects ranged across Japan, Hawaii, and India, and his prints are noted for their golden-hour light, dense atmospheric color, and the soft visual integration of figure and landscape characteristic of his watercolor training.