Bartlett, Charles (1860 – 1940), “Isogo (Pre-Earthquake)”

Notes: Also called, "Camphor Trees". Signed in red pencil in the lower left margin. Signed in block "CWB"; copyright, title and date in lower right corner. Bartlett's notes in his sketchbook: "Isogo - Near Yokohama, Japan. The camphor trees are dark against the twilight sky. A third-day's moon is setting & the fishing fleet is on its homeward way." Bartlett's 1916 woodblock prints of Indian scenes were already on exhibition at the galleries of the Berlin Photographic Company in New York City that same year, alongside color woodblock prints by such American artists as Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922) and Margaret Patterson (1867-1950). His prints found immediate appreciation on the American market. When he hand a one-man show of Asian subjects in New York in 1919, his work was euphemistically described as 'raised to high spiritual significance, and made to breathe the very spirit and mood of the East'. Over the next two decades he continued to rework Asian themes.