Sisters

Bertha Lum

In 1907, the year this was done, Lum returned to Japan for fourteen weeks (she had honeymooned there in 1903) where she met and studied with the master woodblock cutter Bonkotsu Igami who taught her the Japanese blockprinting methods.

Under his direction Lum hired professional craftsmen to work in her home and together they created a composition that draws heavily from Japanese aesthetics. Two sisters, dressed in kimonos are reading a book, one sister seated, turning the pages as the other stands, gazing down at the text. The print appears to be the right-hand section to a diptych but is the complete image, still a radical concept to a Western artist in 1907 who had been trained to contain the whole image within the four edges of the paper.

Lum learned the techniques of using modulated color on a single block to give depth to the flat surfaces and to carve delicate lines to create the patterns of the kimonos and the sisters' hair, while leaving the color of the paper to create the foreground. Areas of orange color adorn the kimonos.

In 1912 Lum was the only foreign woodcut artist to exhibit at the Tenth Annual Art Exhibition in Uyeno Park in Tokyo.