Dear Joan of Art : I would like to know if the Smithsonian collects block print works of art by the artist Helen Hunt. . . I think most of her work was done between 1907 and 1920, and is in the Japanese style.
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Dear Joan of Art : I would like to know if the Smithsonian collects block print works of art by the artist Helen Hunt. . . I think most of her work was done between 1907 and 1920, and is in the Japanese style.
There are at least two artists named Helen Hunt, but I really think you are referring to Helen Hyde. The following is excerpted from an exhibition checklist, Helen Hyde Color Woodblock Prints (Santa Barbara, California: Claire de Heechkeren d'Anthes, 1990):
"Helen Hyde's adventurous story begins in San Francisco where, at the precocious age of twelve, she commenced lessons with Ferdinand Richjardt, the Danish landscape painter and draughtsman. After four years under Soren Emil Carlsen, the eloquent still-life painter, Hyde spent the ritual year at the Art Students League in New York, a year in Berlin. . . . holidays painting in Holland, and finished her studies in Paris . . . concentrating on life drawing and portraiture. However, it was the counsel of Felix Regamey, who cultivated the young woman's interest in Oriental art, which proved to be the most significant in guiding her artistic future. Regamey was a noted Japoniste and the director of the museum which housed the famous collection of Oriental art formed by Émile Guimet. Helen Hyde returned to San Francisco and imported an etching press. She began experimenting with the addition of printed color to her etchings, and apparently became the first printmaker in America to make color etchings in the manner by which we define the medium today. Helen Hyde's interest in the Orient drew her naturally to San Francisco's Chinatown, and it occurred to her that the city's many visitors shared her fascination with the colorful quarter. . . . The artist soon felt that she had exhausted the unique subjects to be found in Chinatown. She resolved to escape to the Orient and study its art and culture in their purest form. Arriving in Japan in 1899, Helen Hyde persuaded Kano Tomonobu, the ninth and last master of the Kano school of painting . . . to instruct her in the mysteries of the Japanese brush. Hyde proved such an apt pupil that she took first prize in an annual competition of Japanese painters for her brush drawing, Monarch of Japan. . . . Helen Hyde did not continue to cut and print her own blocks, preferring instead to work in the traditional Japanese manner and employ skillful craftsmen for this laborious chore. Her printer, Murata, worked in her studio under her direct supervision in much the same way that artists and printers collaborate in a lithographic atelier. Hyde supervised the cutting, inking, and printing of the blocks at every step, and each impression was inspected by the artist for perfect quality, color, and registration. Hyde's limited editions were usually signed and numbered and many bear a printed copyright and date. . . . Helen Hyde's creative talents as a woodblock printer earned her admission to the French Societè de la Gravure Originale en Coleur. . . . While Helen Hyde returned not infrequently to the United States to exhibit her work, she took up permanent residence in Japan."
The Smithsonian American Art Museum has 126 works by Hyde in its permanent collection; you can see the titles for these on our website, where images for four of the works are reproduced.
I hope that this information was useful.
Joan of Art
Pictured: Helen Hyde (1868–1919), My Neighbors,1913, color woodcut, 6 7/8 x 7 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Hyde Gillette in memory of Mabel Hyde Gillette and Edwin Fraser Gillette.