Bertha Lum, Forbidden City

Notes: Signed in pencil by artist. Only a handful of examples were produced due to the time to create such a technical work in the artist's "raised-line" technique. In 1922, Lum settled in Peking, near the Forbidden City. She lived in a house that had formerly belonged to the Prince Tzu, son of the Emperor Tao Kuang. After leaving China for a number of years, Bertha returned to the area and settled in a different house, this one also close to the Forbidden City; which was a special place to her and presumably inspired her to complete this particular design. In the 1920's, Bertha Lum worked with a new type of print-making style, now referred to as, raised line printing. Lum would mold wet paper over a carved wooden block and hand-paint the embossed paper using the raised lines to define the areas of colors. Her raised line prints often had significant variations in colors and are very seldom found for sale.