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| Data.No. | 246 |
Title
Annotation | Eastern Windows.
hard cover,cloth.
125 pp. With 12 tipped-in color plates. These letters and extracts from letters from the wandering artist in her journeyings from Japan to Hokkaido and back; fromJapan to Korea many times and back; from Japan to China and the Philippines several times and back have been grouped according to the countries in which they were written. Most of the illustrations in this book are reproductions of prints made from woodblocks cut in the traditional Japanese manner. The exquisite color plates include views of East Gate in Seoul, a Korean boy in a festival dress, Court musicians in Korea, night scene in Peking, Hong Kong harbor at night, a Japanese dressmaker and a street scene in Soochow. ........................................................
Elizabeth Keith(1887-1956) was born in Scotland and was a self-taught artist. Her sister married an English publisher who worked in Tokyo and Elizabeth went to visit her there in 1915 intending to stay for a short holiday. She travelled to China, Korea and the Philippines, painting watercolours of the fascinating scenes she saw. On her return to Tokyo she held a small exhibition and the entrepreneurial Japanese print publisher Watanabe Shozaburo persuaded her to allow his highly skilled carvers and printers to produce woodblock prints from some of her paintings. Keith wanted to master the techniques herself and she stayed on in Tokyo to study woodblock printing. Before long her blocks were carved and printed with little aid from Watanabe's artisans. Her first prints met with great success. Watanabe was delighted to publish prints by an artist whose work would be appreciated by European and American collectors. Keith was influenced by Fritz Capelari, the Austrian artist whose prints were published by Watanabe and who in his own turn had gone to Japan after the success in Vienna and Berlin of his countryman, Emil Orlik's prints made there early in the century. Keith travelled throughout East Asia and produced more than one hundred prints of oriental subjects. They were well received in the United States and Britain but Watanabe's studio was destroyed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and most of Keith's woodblocks were lost. She returned to England in 1924 and went to France to study the art of etching but in the early 1930s she was again back in the east and she stayed and worked there until just before the Second World War. After the war she went to the United States, where she died although in her last year she held an exhibition in Tokyo. Her talents have become much appreciated and many of her prints are in important public collections and museums. ................ She was a self-taught artist making watercolors and drawings. And Elizabeth probably would never have become the artist we know today, if her sister had not married a publisher in Japan.
A Fateful Journey to Japan
In 1915, at age 28, Elizabeth traveled to Japan where she remained for nine years. When she left England, she had no idea that she would return nine years later. Her sister had married an English publisher living in Tokyo and her trip was planned as a short vacation. Elizabeth was kept by the charm of Japan and the Asian culture and arts.
In her first year in Japan, Elizabeth had a small exhibition with caricatures of foreign residents in Tokyo. From a trip to Korea she brought some watercolors back. Watanabe, the Shin Hanga publisher saw these at an exhibition and convinced Elizabeth to transform one into a woodblock print - a view of the East Gate in Seoul. At that time she had never done a woodblock before. Although she did not perform the carving or printing herself, she wanted to have a basic understanding to supervise the process. So for the next two years she learned the Japanese woodblock printmaking technique.
Returning to England
In 1924 Elizabeth returned to England. Here she started learning color etchings. Elizabeth was back in Asia and Japan from 1932 to 1933 and again in 1935.
In 1936 and 1937 she had exhibitions in the USA. With World War II on the horizon, Elizabeth some how got mentally caught between East and West.
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| Author | Elizabeth Keith |
| Publisher | Hutchinson & Co.Ltd.London |
| Pub.Year(s) | 1928 |
| Language | English |
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