Print of the Day!! Fri, Sept. 21, 2023 is by Bertha Lum (1869-1954): "Sisters", color woodcut, 1907, No. 120/146.

Print of the Day!! Friday, September 21, 2023 is by American woman printmaker Bertha Lum (1869-1954).

"Sisters" is a relief print, a color woodcut done in 1907. The pillar-print format image measures 15-7/8 x 3-1/8 inches. This impression is pencil signed and annotated "Copyright - 07" and "no. 120" by the artist in the lower image. It was published and printed by the artist and her assistants in an edition of around 146 impressions on a sheet of delicate ivory Japanese laid paper that measures 16 x 3-3/8". References for this image include Gravalos/Pulin 14; Library of Congress 43, copyright, 1916; Bertha Lum on-line raisonné 20. The gallery inventory number for this work is 24692.

This color woodcut by American printmaker Bertha Lum is available from the gallery for $1,000.00.

Shipping costs will be discussed. California residents will have sales tax added. Out of state residents may be responsible for use tax, depending on state law. The condition will be discussed upon request or sale.

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In 1907, the year this was done, Lum returned to Japan for fourteen weeks (she had honeymooned there in 1903) where she met and studied with the master woodblock carver Bonkotsu Igami who, together with printer?Kumakichi Nishimura taught her the Japanese blockprinting methods. Under his direction Lum she hired professional craftsmen to work in her home and together they created a composition that draws heavily from Japanese aesthetics.

Two sisters, dressed in kimonos are reading a book, one sister seated, turning the pages as the other stands, gazing down at the text. The print appears to be the right-hand section to a diptych but is the complete image, still a radical concept to a Western artist in 1907 who had been trained to contain the whole image within the four edges of the paper.

Lum learned the techniques of using modulated color on a single block to give depth to the flat surfaces and to carve delicate lines to create the patterns of the kimonos and the sisters' hair, while leaving the color of the paper to create the foreground. Areas of red color adorn the kimonos.

Bertha Lum, neé Bertha Boynton Bull, printmaker and illustrator, was born in Tipton, Iowa in 1869 and spent her youth in Iowa and Duluth, Minnesota. In 1895, Lum attended the Art Institute of Chicago for one year, focusing on design. A few years later studied stained glass with Anne Weston and illustration at the School of Illustration with Frank Holme. In the fall of 1901 to March 1902, Lum studied figure drawing, again at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1903, Bertha married Burt F. Lum, a corporate lawyer, and their honeymoon voyage to Japan in 1903 was the precursor to Bertha's exploration of and fascination with the Orient. Returning to Japan in 1907 for fourteen weeks, she gained an introduction to Bonkotsu Igami, a master block cutter in Tokyo, who disclosed to her the techniques of carving and arranged for her education in block printing.

Though married, Lum was fiercely independent and traveled for extended periods of time. Accompanied by her two young daughters, her 1911 sojourn in Japan lasted six months. By this time she had a thorough understanding of color woodcut and opted for the traditional division of labor. Lum moved easily within Japanese society and hers were the only foreign woodcuts in the Tenth Annual Art Exhibition in Tokyo in 1912.

She was awarded the silver medal at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition and and her work was included in the 1919 Exhibition of Etchings and Block Prints at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921, Lum's Summer was included in American Wood-Block Prints of Today at the New York Public Library and, in 1926, an exhibition of her work was mounted in the fall at the United States National Museum, Division of Graphic Arts. She was a member of the Asiatic Society of Japan, the California Society of Etchers, and the Print Makers Society of California. Lum authored and illustrated Gods, Goblins and Ghosts in 1922 and Gangplanks to the East in 1936.

Lum was in California at the end of 1916 and moved to San Francisco in the fall of 1917, but the following years were interrupted with travel. Her most extensive stay in California was between 1924 and 1927. The 1923 earthquake in Tokyo destroyed most of her blocks and many woodcuts. Lum spent the late 1920s and the 1930s living in Peking, returning to California in 1939. She spent a great deal of time in China between the years 1948 and 1953. Bertha Lum left China to be with her daughter Catherine who lived in Genoa, Italy and she died at the age of eighty-four in February 1954.

To purchase this work or read a biography for Bertha Lum use this link to our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory/artist/1451/Lum/Bertha

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