Wedding Banners

 

Bertha Lum

  1869 - 1954 (biography)

1924  

color woodcut 

8 9/16 x 11 5/16" image 

pencil, bottom right in image 

from an edition of around 67 

in pencil: "copyright 1924 by" and "no 52" 

Gravalos/Pulin 88 

antique-white laid Japanese 

published 

artist 

17282 

SOLD

The colors in Lum's impressions often vary, adding to their unique quality. Below, we have provided a link to a website which illustrates other impressions of this print. This is Lum's impression of the wedding of the last Emporer and the processional for the princess, being escorted to the Imperial City, with lanterns and banners held high. Bertha Lum was a printmaker and illustrator, born in Tipton, Iowa. She attended the Art Institue of Chicago for one year, studied stained glass with Anne Weston, and illustration with Frank Holme. She spent her honeymoon in Japan in 1903, which was the first of many subsequent trips there. In 1907 she spent fourteen weeks in Japan and began her studies of Japanese wood block under the instruction of Bonkotsu Igami. By 1911, when she spent six months in Japan, she had a strong understanding of the process of color woodcut. She was working in the traditional method of division of labor. Lum exhibited in the Tenth Annual Art Exhibition in Tokyo in 1912, in which hers were the only foreign prints.