Women Artists

Helen Hyde

Date: 1905

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.24

Text Entries: Helen Hyde was one of thousands of young American art students in France between 1891 and 1894, the height of popular enthusiasm for Japanese art and culture. She saw Mary Cassatt's Japanese-inspired prints of mothers and children while in Paris, and would produce many variations on this theme in her own prints, though she never married or had children. However, Hyde differed from the majority of Western artists who experimented with Japanese woodblock prints in that she spent half of her adult life living and working in Nikko and Tokyo, Japan. While most Western artists carved their own blocks, Hyde worked exclusively according to the Japanese traditional method, in which the artist collaborates with a specially trained block cutter and printer. The subtle gradations of tone, cutting off or overlapping of forms at the frame, and bold curvilinear variety of shapes evident in The Bath and Moon Bridge at Kameido indicate Hyde's study of Japanese compositional devices. Although executed in Tokyo, Moonlight on the Viga Canal was inspired by scenes from Hyde's 1911 trip to Mexico; she wrote of the "tall, thin, French-looking trees" and "witchyfolk, heavy laden" that followed the canal's banks.

Helen Hyde

Date: 1914

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.25

Text Entries: Helen Hyde was one of thousands of young American art students in France between 1891 and 1894, the height of popular enthusiasm for Japanese art and culture. She saw Mary Cassatt's Japanese-inspired prints of mothers and children while in Paris, and would produce many variations on this theme in her own prints, though she never married or had children. However, Hyde differed from the majority of Western artists who experimented with Japanese woodblock prints in that she spent half of her adult life living and working in Nikko and Tokyo, Japan. While most Western artists carved their own blocks, Hyde worked exclusively according to the Japanese traditional method, in which the artist collaborates with a specially trained block cutter and printer. The subtle gradations of tone, cutting off or overlapping of forms at the frame, and bold curvilinear variety of shapes evident in The Bath and Moon Bridge at Kameido indicate Hyde's study of Japanese compositional devices. Although executed in Tokyo, Moonlight on the Viga Canal was inspired by scenes from Hyde's 1911 trip to Mexico; she wrote of the "tall, thin, French-looking trees" and "witchyfolk, heavy laden" that followed the canal's banks.

Helen Hyde

Date: 1912

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.26

Text Entries: Helen Hyde was one of thousands of young American art students in France between 1891 and 1894, the height of popular enthusiasm for Japanese art and culture. She saw Mary Cassatt's Japanese-inspired prints of mothers and children while in Paris, and would produce many variations on this theme in her own prints, though she never married or had children. However, Hyde differed from the majority of Western artists who experimented with Japanese woodblock prints in that she spent half of her adult life living and working in Nikko and Tokyo, Japan. While most Western artists carved their own blocks, Hyde worked exclusively according to the Japanese traditional method, in which the artist collaborates with a specially trained block cutter and printer. The subtle gradations of tone, cutting off or overlapping of forms at the frame, and bold curvilinear variety of shapes evident in The Bath and Moon Bridge at Kameido indicate Hyde's study of Japanese compositional devices. Although executed in Tokyo, Moonlight on the Viga Canal was inspired by scenes from Hyde's 1911 trip to Mexico; she wrote of the "tall, thin, French-looking trees" and "witchyfolk, heavy laden" that followed the canal's banks.

Helen Hyde

Date: 1908

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1996.27

Text Entries: Helen Hyde was one of thousands of young American art students in France between 1891 and 1894, the height of popular enthusiasm for Japanese art and culture. She saw Mary Cassatt's Japanese-inspired prints of mothers and children while in Paris, and would produce many variations on this theme in her own prints, though she never married or had children. However, Hyde differed from the majority of Western artists who experimented with Japanese woodblock prints in that she spent half of her adult life living and working in Nikko and Tokyo, Japan. While most Western artists carved their own blocks, Hyde worked exclusively according to the Japanese traditional method, in which the artist collaborates with a specially trained block cutter and printer. The subtle gradations of tone, cutting off or overlapping of forms at the frame, and bold curvilinear variety of shapes evident in The Bath and Moon Bridge at Kameido indicate Hyde's study of Japanese compositional devices. Although executed in Tokyo, Moonlight on the Viga Canal was inspired by scenes from Hyde's 1911 trip to Mexico; she wrote of the "tall, thin, French-looking trees" and "witchyfolk, heavy laden" that followed the canal's banks.