Art
Pioneering Hawai'i printmaker's works still glow

By Virginia Wageman
Advertiser Art Critic

When artist Charles William Bartlett arrived in Honolulu in 1917, he was at once taken with the climate and landscape of Hawai'i and with the warmth of its inhabitants. Like many artists before and after him, including John Kelly, Madge Tennent and Jean Charlot, he chose to remain in this paradisiacal setting for the rest of his life, leaving only for art-making sojourns in Japan, China and Java.

•	Charles William Bartlett • A Printmaker in Paradise: The Art and Life of Charles W. Bartlett • Honolulu Academy of Arts • Through Jan. 6 • 532-8700

Thanks to their efforts, which include an illustrated catalog with informative essays, this little-known artist is now brought to public light.

Trained at the venerable Royal Academy in London and the Academie Julian in Paris, the English-born Bartlett (known throughout his life as Will) soon deviated from his academic background, taking up printmaking and creating compositions with flattened, simplified shapes.

Travels, first in Holland and Brittany, later in Ceylon, India and Japan, culminated in 1917 with Bartlett's arrival in Honolulu. He was to remain here until his death in 1940, living with his wife, Catherine, in a rambling house on Woodlawn Drive in Manoa.

The Bartletts were active in Honolulu artistic and social circles, and soon were befriended by the art patron Anna Rice Cooke, described in the exhibition's catalog as "the grande dame of island society." Mrs. Cooke was to found the Honolulu Academy of Arts, where a portrait of her by Bartlett hangs at the entrance (it has been moved temporarily for inclusion in the current exhibition).

This portrait is particularly interesting for the calligraphic symbol at the upper right that has been the academy's logo since its founding — whether designed by Bartlett or simply used by him is not explained in the catalog.

Bartlett was 57 years old when he and his wife moved to Hawai'i, so it is not surprising that the bulk of the work exhibited is from earlier periods of his life. It's too bad, though, that one or two of the many commissioned portraits of kama'aina children that Bartlett painted could not have been included. They were his major source of income during his Honolulu years.

Even in Hawai'i Bartlett continued to draw on Oriental subjects, referring to sketchbooks from his earlier travels for inspiration. Scenes from India, Kashmir and Japan make up the bulk of the works exhibited (excluding the earlier European subjects).

There are, however, 18 works with Hawai'i themes, most of them net fishermen, a subject for which the artist apparently had a liking. It is a bit disappointing to learn from the catalog that Bartlett derived many of his island-based themes, including the fishermen, from photographs rather than from personal observation. But this does not lessen their merit as enchanting depictions of native life.

Bartlett found printmaking techniques well suited to expressing his artistic visions. He excelled especially at the Japanese technique of ukiyo-e printing, which he learned in Japan in the workshop of Shozaburo Watanabe.

Using as many as 30 carved wooden blocks to achieve glowing, jewel-like hues, Bartlett's prints inspired by ukiyo-e techniques are among his finest achievements. See especially his many Mount Fuji and Taj Mahal prints, where water, sky, mountain and architecture literally shimmer in a profusion of warm colors.

A tangential exhibition in the Graphic Arts Gallery at the academy shows individual proofs from the 30 wooden blocks used to create the luminous "Hour of Prayer, India," with Muslims bowing in prayer at sunset. Hanging below each proof is a print showing the overlayering of each block's design, culminating in the finished print.

In Hawai'i, perhaps because he did not have the skilled artisans of Japanese workshops to execute his ukiyo-e prints, Bartlett instead made a great many copper-plate etchings, which he hand-colored himself with watercolors.

Among those in the exhibition, depictions of catamarans in Ceylon, crowded streets in India and junks on Chinese rivers are especially noteworthy, their delicate colors in complicated combinations bringing depth and vivacity to the black-and-white prints.

Bartlett was instrumental in founding the Honolulu Printmakers, which is today housed in the Academy Art Center at Linekona and will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2003. The Honolulu Academy of Arts will be 75 years old in 2002.

The retrospective of Bartlett's rarely exhibited paintings, watercolors and prints is a grand preface to these momentous celebrations.

Virginia Wageman can be reached at VWageman@aol.com.