Charles William Bartlett

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland·1860-1940

Charles William Bartlett trained as a painter and etcher in London and Paris before traveling throughout Europe with fellow artist Frank Brangwyn, producing distinguished studies of peasant life. In 1915, after years of travel through India, Ceylon, Indonesia, China, and Japan, he met woodblock publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō in Tokyo. Their collaboration proved decisive: Bartlett designed shin-hanga prints that synthesized his Western eye with Japanese printmaking tradition, creating landscapes and scenes of India and Japan marked by bold, flattened forms and subtle light effects. He settled permanently in Hawaii in 1917, where he helped found the Honolulu Printmakers and remained until his death in 1940, producing over ninety woodblocks and etchings. His work bridged continents and traditions, earning him a place in major collections and the patronage of Anna Rice Cooke, founder of the Honolulu Museum of Art.