Collection: Charles W. Bartlett

Charles William Bartlett (1860–1940) was an English painter and printmaker. Trained at the Royal Academy and the Académie Julian in Paris under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger, he initially worked in Europe before relocating to Hawaii in 1917. His early career reflected academic traditions, though later exposure to Japanese art, particularly during a 1915 visit to Japan, shifted his practice toward ukiyo-e and shin-hanga influences.

Bartlett’s work spans oil painting and printmaking, with a marked transition from European academicism to a synthesis of Western and Japanese aesthetics. His later output, particularly in Hawaii, embraced woodblock techniques and subjects drawn from local landscapes and culture. Collaboration with Shōzaburō Watanabe in 1916 facilitated his engagement with Japanese printmaking traditions, evident in compositions balancing naturalism with decorative stylization.

Though primarily active in Hawaii, Bartlett’s encounter with shin-hanga contributed to the cross-pollination of Eastern and Western graphic traditions in the early 20th century. His prints and paintings, often depicting Hawaiian and Japanese motifs, reflect a hybrid visual language that prefigured later transnational exchanges in modernist printmaking.