This month a new print, or rather a different version: the print has been catalogued for a long time, it is “Forbidden City”, but until now the work was only presented as a “flat” , classic wood block print. Here I am presenting you the work in relief , in “raised lines” as Bertha called the technique. I had not realized until last year when I updated the site that I had the two versions in my archives.
After several years of waiting I finally had the opportunity to take a picture of the “Marionette Princess” folding screen in color. It was under glass and the quality of the pictures was really poor. During a move it was taken out of its frames to be cleaned. Here is a very rare photo that I propose you this month.
The catalog of an exhibition on the No in 1931 in New York at Kennedy and Company. Bertha had painted a whole series of illustrations on this theme. The works were not sold that year because in 1932 in a newspaper article they were still for sale.
An article by Lucia B. Harriman on Bertha Lum. The article certainly dates from 1916 but I have not been able to find out from which magazine it is taken.
Lucia B. Harriman was a journalist from Portland, Oregon, who lived in Japan for two years between 1914 and 1916. There she was editor in chief of the woman’s department of the Associated Press.
She also published an article on Helen Hyde in 1921 for the Pacific Review (Helen Hyde and her Japanese Prints).
I came across the Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch website almost by chance during my research and I was pleased to see that the site offered the book Gangplanks to the East fully digitized in pdf format. Here it is now available for download in the bibliography section.
Finally I wanted to inform you that a rather rare print Spirit of the Volcano is currently on sale on ebay. However, contrary to what is written in the description, it is not a relief print.
Pines by the Sea will be on auction the 5th of March by The Swann Auctions Galleries.
