Road to the Forest (a.k.a. 'Road through the Forest at Nikko' & 'Carmel Cottages')

Bertha Lum

According to Mary Gravalos and Carol Pulin, Bertha Lum’s first voyage to Japan was undertaken in 1903 and they state that Lum had mastered the complex Japanese printmaking technique by 1912. "Road to the Forest" is listed in their book as having been produced in 1916 but this impression is clearly dated 1905 and would therefore place it among Lum's first color woodcuts.

Impressions of this work are variously titled "Road to the Forest at Nikko," "Road to the Forest," and "Carmel Cottages." This may have been a necessity for marketing, as American sentiment toward Japan fluctuated depending on global political and economic conditions. As with many artists, Lum sometimes had difficulty selling works with Japanese subject matter in early 20th century America; thus, when a work was neutral enough to be seen as familiar to Americans (such as pine-lined landscapes, as common in California as in Japan), titles were easy to change, if only temporarily.

Here, the image of a country road curving past the glow of lamp-lit cottages and into a misty pine forest is richly luminous, and is exemplary of Lum's ability to render the atmosphere of a place as expertly as the subjects within it.