Bartlett, Charles (1860 - 1940 )
Charles William Bartlett was an English printmaker and painter. He studied painting and etching at the Royal Academy in London before continuing his education at the Academie Julian in Paris. Soon after, Bartlett traveled and worked in Europe alongside fellow artist Frank Brangwyn, who introduced him to Japanese woodblock prints. In 1897, Bartlett was invited to join the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in France and in 1907 helped found the Société de la Peinture a l'Eau in Paris. In 1913, he traveled to British India, Ceylon, Indonesia, China and Japan. While in Japan in 1915, he met the woodblock print publisher Shozaburo Watanabe. Watanabe published 21 woodblock prints from Bartlett's designs in 1916, as well as another 16 upon Bartlett’s return to Japan in 1919. During his return to England in 1917, Bartlett stopped in Hawaii, where he fell in love with the islands and made Hawaii his permanent home.
Shin Hanga | Pre-WWII Japanese Prints
By the beginning of the 20th century the social fabric of Japan was radically altered and ukiyo-e was falling fast into oblivion. Surprisingly, it was under the stimulus of the Western art world that the spirit of ukiyo-e was reborn through the Shin Hanga or “new print” movement. The discovery of the powerful impact of ukiyo-e print masters on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists inspired a new generation of Japanese print artists who revived distinctly Japanese subject matter through modern eyes. International excitement for ukiyo-e paved the way for these artists to create woodblock prints with the same dignity, perfection and genius as the masters of the Edo period. As artists such as Goyo, Kotondo and Shinsui revived bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women) and Hasui and Yoshida reinterpreted the landscape of Japan, Shin Hanga reasserted the principal genres of ukiyo-e with a renewed vigor. Browse our collection of Shin Hanga and other pre-war Japanese artworks today.
