Artwork Title: Taj Mahal, Sunset

Taj Mahal, Sunset, 1920

Charles W. Bartlett

...This view of the Taj Mahal here confirms the success of the collaboration between Bartlett and Watanabe. The publisher had just initiated a full-scale attempt to create the shin hanga movement, employing master block cutters and printers to translate into the woodblock medium a wide variety of sketches by native Japanese and western artists. In this example, the play of light and dark values is most effective, particularly in the dappled sunlight and shadows cast by the trees in the foreground. The famous mausoleum does not dominate the scene as in most depictions (see Yoshida). Bartlett chose instead to depict a partial view, with the main section positioned in the background and shrouded in a bath of sunlight. The greater contrast and more highly charged chromatic values are given to the structures on the building's wings and to the trees, and the intensity of the blues and greens is almost electric. (http://www.viewingjapaneseprints.net/texts/shin_hanga/bartlett.html)
Uploaded on Oct 15, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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