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Elizabeth Keith

  1887 - 1956
 
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[Chinese Pagoda – ducks in foreground] sold

[Chinese Pagoda – ducks in foreground]   1919

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Very rare – not recorded by Miles. The original blocks for this work are thought to have been destroyed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, along with the majority of the blocks for Keith’s early woodcuts.

One of Elizabeth Keith’s earliest colour woodcuts. No other impression of this early work is recorded.

SOLD



Bridge Soochow sold

Bridge Soochow   1924

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Early proof impression, a very rare example before the heavy diagonal lines indicating rain were added across the whole of the key block. Good impression printed with considerable grey inking to give the effect of the dull showery day which Elizabeth Keith sought to achieve.

SOLD



East Gate, Seoul sold

East Gate, Seoul   1920

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Very rare – not recorded by Miles. The original blocks for this work are thought to have been destroyed in the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, along with the majority of the blocks for Elizabeth Keith’s early woodcuts.

Superb, strong impression with rich, unfaded colours. Signed proof, printed in blue, orange, green, grey and black inks.

SOLD



Hong Kong Night sold

Hong Kong Night   1924

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Outstanding impression with exceptionally strong, brilliant colours. A particularly striking proof impression – one of the finest examples, signed in pink chalk.

Elizabeth Keith’s most famous print and the most sought-after of her works.

SOLD



Manchu Lady sold

Manchu Lady   1925

Original woodcut, printed in colours.

Brilliant impression with exceptionally strong, fresh colours. Signed proof, printed in blue, orange, brown, pink, green, grey, black and red inks.

An outstanding example of one of Keith’s largest and most elaborate original colour woodcuts. This was the print which Keith’s artisans chose to present to her in a series of proof impressions upon her final departure from Japan.

SOLD

 

The Scottish-born artist Elizabeth Keith first went to Japan in 1915 on the invitation of her sister’s husband, who was a publisher in Tokyo. This intended holiday developed into a wandering stay of nine years, during which time Elizabeth Keith travelled widely throughout the Orient. She achieved local notoriety in Tokyo in 1917 with the publication of a group of caricatures which she had made of local socialites and dignitaries. It was after one of these designs was translated into a traditional Japanese-style woodblock print by another artist that Elizabeth Keith first became interested in this art form.

When the publisher Shosaburo Watanabe approached Keith with the idea of publishing her designs in the traditional Japanese woodblock format, Keith leapt at the opportunity. The traditional Japanese art of ukiyo-e colour printmaking involves the sequential superimposition of multiple carved printing blocks. Elizabeth Keith spent the next two years learning the techniques of carving and printing using the traditional ukiyo-e method, finally producing her first fully fledged works in the medium in 1919. Elizabeth Keith went on to produce some of the finest colour woodblock prints of her generation and is now considered to have been one of the world’s finest woodblock print artists in the Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world) style. [more]