Frost

In Bertha Lum's color woodcut Frost, finely cut lines articulate a lacy network of tapering tree branches and delicate veils of color, shading from cream to silvery gray, evoke the shimmering, silvery covering of icy particles. Like her Mother West Wind (TF 1996.38), Frost exemplifies Bertha Lum's skill in harmonizing Western and Japanese approaches to nature and decoration. From creating the design to pulling the impressions, the artist executed every part of the printmaking process herself, demonstrating that she had fully mastered the exacting Japanese traditional color woodcut technique. During three extended trips to Tokyo (in 1907, 1911-12, and 1915-16), Lum studied ukiyo-e methods directly from master block cutters and printers, and she enlisted their expertise in the production of several of her print editions.

After spending much of her life in Minnesota, in 1917 Lum moved with her family to San Francisco, where two years earlier her color print virtuosity was recognized with a prestigious award at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. She executed the wood block for Frost, one of her California prints, in 1918. She personally inscribed this impression with a 1919 date, indicating the year she printed it, although many artists customarily date their prints with the year they made the matrix, regardless of the date a particular impression was printed.

(Re)Presenting Women, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, October 16, 2001–January 13, 2002.

Manifest Destiny, Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. Terra Foundation  for American Art, Chicago, Illinois and Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Loyola University Museum of Art,  May 17–August 10, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Terra Collection-in-Residence, Ashmolean Museum of Art & Archaeology, Oxford, United Kingdom, September 15, 2022–September 30, 2026.

 

Gravelos, Mary Evans O'Keefe and Carol Pulin. Bertha Lum. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. No. 50, pp. 74, 97; p. 23.

Brownlee, Peter John. Manifest Destiny / Manifest Responsibility: Environmentalism and the Art of the American Landscape. (exh. cat., Loyola University Museum of Art, Chicago, Illinois). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for American Art and Loyola University Museum of Art, 2008. Text p. 37 (checklist).