Bertha lum biography channel

Bertha Lum ranks among the important twentieth-century American printmakers who were inspired by Asian culture, particularly the style and masterful technique of Japanese prints.

Born Bertha Boynton Bull and raised in Iowa and Minnesota, Lum began her formal art education in 1895 at the Art Institute of Chicago's prestigious school, where she studied design and later, in 1901, figure drawing.

Bertha lum biography channel

She also received training from newspaper illustrator and printmaker Frank Holme (1868–1904). Lum's aesthetic sensibilities were further shaped by the display of Japanese prints she saw at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and by Arthur Wesley Dow's influential textbook Composition (1899), which promoted Japanese color woodcuts as models.

In 1903, she married Burt Lum, a Minneapolis lawyer. During their honeymoon trip to Japan, the aspiring artist collected ukiyo-e woodcut prints and sought out artisans practicing traditional printmaking techniques. In 1904, Lum m