The Woodblock Prints of Charles Hovey Pepper

Charles Hovey Pepper (1864-1950) has the distinction of being the second American (after Helen Hyde) to travel to Japan and to have Japanese woodblocks made there based on his watercolors.  Born in Waterville, Maine, Pepper was the son of the Reverend George Dana Boardman Pepper, a minister of the First Baptist Church of Waterville, who became the President of Colby University (now Colby College) in 1882.  Pepper received his A.B. degree from Colby in 1889 and his A.M. in 1892.  In 1890, Pepper and his wife moved to New York City, where he continued his studies at the Arts Student League under William Merritt Chase.  Three years later, Pepper and his family moved to Paris for six years, where he studied at the Académie Julian for two years under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens.  Pepper then studied with the art nouveau painter Edmund Aman-Jean, and subsequently set up own studio in Paris, regularly exhibiting paintings at the Paris Salon in 1894, 1895, 1897, and 1898.

Sketch of Charles Hovey Pepper by Thomas J. Fogarty (1893)

Charles Hovey Pepper (c. 1900-1910)

One day Pepper discovered Japanese prints in an oriental tea store in Paris and started to collect them, which led him to make contact with the prominent art dealer Siegfried Bing, one of the major Japonisme proponents of the day.  The two became friends and, in 1897, Bing gave Pepper his first solo show, exhibiting thirty of his paintings at Bing’s gallery, Maison de l’Art Nouveau.  During those Paris years, Pepper and his family spent their summers in Holland in the town of Egmond-an-den Hoef, near Alkmaar.  After years of painting in an academic brown tone and low harmonies, Pepper began to paint in a palette of blues, greens, and browns “greyed” into harmonies.   According to Pepper’s biographer Joseph Coburn Smith, Pepper’s exposure to Japanese prints led to “his experimental spacing of the picture elements, the absence of chiaroscuro, and the sometimes noticeable black outlines,” in addition to the use of “the upright shape which has always been his favorite.”

Alkmaar, Holland (c. 1895) by Charles Hovey Pepper

Courtesy of Colby Museum of Art

(watercolor on board)

[Dutch Woman in Forest] (pre-1904) by Charles Hovey Pepper

Courtesy of Steven Thomas, Inc.

(color etching and aquatint)

Pepper and his family returned to Massachusetts in 1899 and settled in Concord, Massachusetts.   In 1903, Pepper’s growing interest in Japanese art led to a decision to visit Japan, a trip that ultimately took the Pepper family abroad for a year and a half.  Pepper set his sights on acquiring an outstanding collection of Japanese prints, ultimately collecting over six hundred prints that year in Japan (including some copies), and many more over the next several decades.  Pepper and his family initially stayed in Yokohama to get their bearings but, on the advice of Helen Hyde, they went to Nikko to get an authentic experience of old Japan.  It is known that they also went to Kyoto, Myanoshita, and crossed the Ten Province Pass on their way to Atami, before returning to Tokyo via train.

The Tea Picker (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper

Personal Collection

(gouache)

After an unsuccessful attempt to engage a village girl in Nikko to model for him, Pepper was able to engage three women (Dynko, Yayako, and Sanpachi) from a local teahouse to pose for photographs, which he used to create a number of watercolor figure studies.  Back in Toyko, he also retained craftsmen employed by Hyde’s print publisher Kobayashi Bunshichi to carve and print four woodblock prints based on his watercolor designs.

Untitled (possibly "The Country Girl") (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper

Personal Collection

(watercolor and gouache)

Drawing (1903) on verso of the untitled painting above by Charles Hovey Pepper

Personal Collection

When Arthur Wesley Dow arrived in Yokohama in October 1903, he stopped at a local branch of Kobayashi’s shop where he was shown what appears to have been Pepper’s Geisha print.  Dow met Pepper in Toyko the following week at the Hotel Metropole, and learned that Kobayashi charged Pepper 30 yen for the first 100 prints and 20 yen for the 100 prints thereafter with Kobayashi keeping the blocks.  A few days later Dow was able to watch one of Kobayashi’s printers at work in Pepper’s hotel room printing a set of Harunobu prints from blocks that Pepper had bought.  While Pepper intently studied how Japanese woodblock prints were made, unlike either Hyde or Dow he seemingly never attempted to self-carve or print any of his own designs.

   

The Pilgrims, Chuzenji (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper

Courtesy of Colby Museum of Art

(watercolor on board)

Pepper originally planned to return home across the Pacific but, on the recommendation of friends, the Peppers sailed through the Inland Sea to visit Shanghai, Hong Kong, Canton, Macao, Singapore, Java, and Calcutta.  In India, they traveled to Darjeeling, Agra, Delhi, Amber, Bombay, and Madras, before sailing from Ceylon through the Suez Canal to Genoa.  From there they visited Paris and England before returning to Concord in 1904.

The Cherry Dance (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper

(watercolor)

Upon his return to the United States, Pepper worked with architects on the design of a new home in Concord, which included a Japanese garden behind Pepper's separate studio.  In the spring of 1904, ten of Pepper’s Japanese watercolors were exhibited at the Philadelphia Water Color Club.   This, however, was just a prelude to his participation in the New York Water Color Club’s 15^th Annual Exhibition that fall, where 42 of his Japanese paintings were exhibited (priced between $125 to $400), along with his four woodblock prints made in Japan (selling for $10 each).  In addition to the four Japanese paintings shown in this post, and one other that resides at Colby College ("The Old Pine"), the whereabouts of these other 37 paintings are unknown at present.

Dyn-ko Looks at the Garden (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper
Published by Kobayashi Bunshichi

Personal Collection

(color woodblock print)

Fleur-de-Lys (aka Ikebana) (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper
Published by Kobayashi Bunshichi

Personal Collection

(color woodblock print)

Pepper’s four Japanese woodblock prints are not titled and have been sold by dealers under a variety of descriptive or attributed titles over the years.  However, I discovered that the New York Water Color Club’s 1904 catalog provides official titles for all four prints, which I have used in my print captions.  Not coincidentally, the original paintings bearing the same titles were also exhibited in the New York show.  What remains unknown at this time is the extent to which Pepper’s prints may have varied in execution from those original watercolors.

Geisha (aka The Japanese Dance) (1903) by Charles Hovey Pepper
Published by Kobayashi Bunshichi

Personal Collection

(color woodblock print)

Note:  In addition to a watercolor called "Geisha," Pepper also exhibited another watercolor called "Dyn-ko Dances" at the New York Water Color Club show, which suggests that the model for the dancer in this print might be Dyn-ko.

The Purple Obi (aka The Kakemono) by Charles Hovey Pepper
Published by Kobayashi Bunshichi

Personal Collection

(color woodblock print)

Note:  The name of the model inscribed this print is "Yaeko," possibly an inadvertent corruption of "Yayako."

In January 1905, an exhibition of Edo-period color woodblock prints “compiled by Charles Hovey Pepper” were exhibited at the gallery of the Boston dealer Walter Kimball.  Presumably all or most of these prints were drawn from Pepper’s personal collection.   That same year, Kimball published a small pamphlet by Pepper called Japanese Color Prints that included a concise description of Japanese printmaking techniques and one of the earliest overviews of the history of Japanese printmaking for an American audience.

Japanese Prints (Walter Kimball, 1905) by Charles Hovey Pepper

Personal Collection

Pepper later sent Kobayashi a Dutch watercolor and French watercolor to be turned into woodblock prints.  The title of the former is not currently known, but the latter is called “The Conspirators,” presumably after the watercolor of the same title shown in the 1906 Pacific Painting Society exhibition in Tokyo’s Ueno Park, which in turn was based on a photograph Pepper had taken in Paris.  I suspect that Pepper had a couple of hundred of his first four Japanese prints made while he was in Japan, as they turn up in the marketplace with some regularity, but these two European designs are exceedingly rare.  They are also different from his earlier woodblock prints in that they are borderless prints that lack paper margins, and are smaller in size.

[Dutch Woman in Cloak at Doorway] (c. 1906) by Charles Hovey Pepper
Published by Kobayashi Bunshichi

Personal Collection

(color woodblock print)

The Conspirators (c. 1906) by Charles Hovey Pepper
Published by Kobayashi Bunshichi

Personal Collection

(color woodblock print)

In 1912, Pepper became a member of the Boston Art Club and, in 1913, he became a member of “The Four Boston Painters,” a modernist group found by Carl Gordon Cutler.  In 1917, Pepper became the Director of the Exhibitions Committee of the Boston Art Club and started to introduce modernist oil paintings and watercolors into what had been an exclusively conservative art domain.  In 1918, he began the annual exhibitions of the New England Artists’ series, and in 1920 the Boston Art Club under Pepper and his close friend John T. Spaulding held an exhibition of American woodblock prints that was dominated by the Provincetown Printmakers.  Pepper was subsequently elected President of the Boston Art Club in 1924 and 1925.  Throughout his life Pepper would collect and promote the work of progressive artists such as Maurice Prendergast, John Sloan, Marsden Hartley, and Edward Hopper.

Skating by Charles Hovey Pepper

Courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

(watercolor)

The Inner Harbor by Charles Hovey Pepper

Courtesy of Skinner Auctioneers

(gouache)

While Pepper’s early work emphasized portraiture and figure studies, his work after Japan tended to focus on landscapes, particularly that near Attean Lake in Maine near the Canadian border, which provided vistas not unlike some Pepper saw in Japan.  Throughout his career, art critics would remark on the Japanese influence in his work:  a preference for calligraphic lines, flat planes of color, and aerial perspectives.

At Attean Pond, Maine by Charles Hovey Pepper

Courtesy of Skinner Auctineers

(watercolor)

[Lake View, Possibly Attean Pond, Maine] by Charles Hovey Pepper
Courtesy of Steven Thomas, Inc.
(watercolor)

Most of Pepper's Japanese woodblock print collection was donated to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (where John T. Spaulding’s Japanese print collection forms the core of the MFA’s ukiyo-e collection).  A number of fine examples of ukiyo-e prints, however, were also given to Pepper’s alma mater, Colby College.  Today, the Art Department at Colby College annually awards the Charles Hovey Pepper Prize to honor the meritorious achievement of a Studio Art major.

 Charles Hovey Pepper (c. 1945)

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