Thursday, November 17, 2016

Welcome to Karuizawa: The Etchings of Willy Seiler

Note: This post has been updated and revised in light of new information supplied by Anita A. Larenz, Willy Seiler's daughter, and Werner R. Seiler, Rudolf Seiler's son.
 
Willy Otto Oskar Seiler (1903-1985) was one of the most popular foreign printmakers in post-WWII Japan.  His target audience was American tourists and, in particular, G.I.s stationed in occupied Japan.

Willy Seiler (1941)

Most of the basic reported facts about Seiler’s life and career come from articles in Pacific Stars and Stripes and similar publications or from Seiler’s own promotional materials and, no doubt, contain some puffery.  Based on interviews with members of the Seiler family, I have been able to correct many of the apocryophal facts surrounding Seiler's life and career, although the family members' recollections are not always in agreement.
 
Seiler was born in Oberlößnitz [Radebeul], near Dresden, Germany in 1903.  He received his first schooling in art in Dresden, and then worked as a porcelain painter at the famed Meissen Studio.  He continued his studies in Munich, followed by a two year period of study in Paris, where he met his future wife, Marie Schneider.  The pair would later marry in Greece.  Thereafter Seiler worked as an artist and as a restorer of old paintings (also his father’s profession) until about 1928, at which point he left Germany and began to travel the world.

[Road to Karuizawa] by Willy Seiler
(oil painting)

Road to Karuizawa (plate #49A) by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of Artelino.com
(hand-colored etching)

By the 1950s, he had supposedly visited approximately 50 countries, some of them several times.  His paintings were said to have been “exhibited in Rome and Paris, in Jerusalem and Teheran, San Francisco and Mexico . . . enthusiastically received and acclaimed by Maharajahs in India and by princes and high officials in many other countries.”   According to Seiler himself, his work was owned by such luminaries as Sir Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, Willy Brandt, Conrad Hilton, Robert MacNamara, John Foster Dulles, Theodor Heuss, Danny Kaye, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  (As impressive as this might sound, at least some of these people owned his work because Seiler gave them his etchings as gifts.)

Pearl Divers by Willy Seiler
(oil painting)

Pearl Divers (plate #5A) by Willy Seiler
(hand-colored etching)

Seiler first visited Japan in 1933 with his wife Marie (nicknamed Mariette) at the invitation of the Japanese Industry Club on his way to the United States and Mexico.  Merrill Holmes has uncovered a passenger list from November 1933 that said that Marie was from Dresden and listed her occupation as a landscape artist.  (In contrast, Seiler's occupation at that time was listed as a portrait artist.)  Seiler's daughter, however, told me that Marie Seiler was born outside of French-speaking Strasbourg, and so French by birth, and was studying to be a pediatric nurse in Paris when she met Willy.   She took up painting for only a very short period of time after she married but decided that it was not what she wanted to do.
 
Seiler's daughter Anita was born in Japan during that trip, and the Seilers left Japan in November 1933 for California once mother and child were in a condition to travel.  Four years later, Willy decided to follow his older brother Rudolf Seiler on his own trip to Japan.  The two brothers would thereafter remain in Japan for over three decades.  
 
In 1937, Willy Seiler founded an art school in Tokyo until it closed in 1945.  Few oil paintings from this period have survived, however, due to the Allied bombing of Tokyo that destroyed the homes of many of Seiler's Japanese patrons.  
 
Seiler also visited the Central China front as war artist for the Japanese government at some point during the Second Sino-Japanese War.  (Seiler's nephew says that Willy was a good photographer, but thinks it unlikely that he actually sketched or painted anything on his trips.)  Unlike his brother Rudolf, who had been actively working against Hitler since 1933, Werner Seiler says that Willy Seiler was a member and supporter of the National Socialist German Workers' Party which, if true, no doubt ingratiated him with the Japanese authorities and helped him secure the war artist position.  Willy Seiler's daughter disputes the implication that her father had Nazi-party sympathies, noting that Willy was against the War, that he was not antisemitic, that he had many Jewish friends, and that he later married (or else had a common law marriage with) a Jewish concentration camp survivor.

Map of Karuizawa
Courtesy of Petrie-Rogers Asian Fine Arts & Antiques

According to Werner Seiler, Rudolf Seiler, like most foreign residents, was forcibly evacuated from Tokyo with his family in the spring of 1945 and was resettled in Karuizawa.   He said that Willy Seiler and his family were living in the Kobe area at that time, were evacuated to Gotemba, near Hakone, but that Willy would later also move Karuizawa, where he opened up a studio.   Anita Lorenz, however, said her family was living in the residential district of Tokyo called Ômori immediately before moving to Karuizawa.
 
When WWII was over, Rudolf Seiler's family was given special IDs and full Allied Forces privileges.  Like other Germans who had not been NSDAP members or supporters, they were allowed to stay in Japan.  Anita Lorenz remembers officials coming to her house and receiving special IDs as well.  Werner Seiler, however, says that all other Germans, including Willy Seiler's family, were told that they would be deported back to Germany.  It was only because Rudolf Seiler, who had become close to General MacArthur, had intervened on Willy's behalf that Willy was allegedly paroled and allowed to stay in Japan with certain restrictions.  Rudolf Seiler also supposedly ended up financially supported his brother for some time.  Anita Lorenz, on the other hand, says she is not aware of any evidence to support such claims, and says that her father would never have been allowed social contact with General MacArthur if he had had Nazi sympathies.  The two brothers had a permanent falling out over another matter not long after, which resulted in decades of estrangement among the two branches of the Seiler family.
 
Karuizawa, a posh resort town, was also one of the locations where the occupying forces were stationed after WWII.  Willy Seiler would later instruct U.S. Army personnel in oil painting, life drawing, and sketching at the Tokyo Army Educational Center in the late 1940s.  Around this time, Willy divorced his wife Marie.  By the 1950s, Seiler had reopened the “Willy Seiler Academy of Fine Arts” in Tokyo in partnership with the conductor and composer Manfred Gurlitt.  One of  the other inhabitants in Karuizawa during the war was the French artist and woodblock print designer Paul Jacoulet, who also occasionally lectured at the Tokyo Army Educational Center.

 
Japanese Girl and Boy dolls by Willy Seiler

In addition to oil painting and etching, Seiler also created “Seiler dolls,” cloth dolls similar to those produced in China by Ada Lum.  They depict field workers, apprentice geisha, schoolboys, etc. in authentic native Japanese or Korean dress.

Heartbroken by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of Petrie-Rogers Asian Fine Arts & Antiques
(oil painting)

Heartbroken (plate #8A) by Willy Seiler
(hand-colored etching)

While Seiler’s oil paintings only intermittently turn up today, beginning in late 1940s Seiler began to make the soft ground copperplate etchings for which he is best remembered today.  Anita Lorenz said this switch was of economic necessity, as most of Seiler's former patrons could no longer afford to buy his oil paintings after the War.  The majority of these etchings, which were primarily sold at various military base post exchanges in the Far East, feature sympathetic portraits of peasant farmers and fisherman at work, children at play, and women chatting or shopping.  Seiler also made landscape etchings, but he eschewed the usual depictions of temples and castles, focusing instead on the natural beauty of the Japanese countryside.  He also did a series of nudes, intended no doubt to decorate the barracks of lonely servicemen.

Cormorant Fishing (plate #11) by Willy Seiler
(etching)

General MacArthur [#2] (plate #38A) by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of Petrie-Rogers Asian Fine Arts & Antiques
(hand-colored etching)

Although the vast majority of Seiler’s etchings feature Japanese people or landscapes, a handful feature Chinese subjects.  He also released a “Korean edition” of twelve etchings (not counting his portrait of Dr. Syngman Rhee).  Particularly popular were three bust portraits of General Douglas MacArthur which were made while on assignment for Pacific Stars and Stripes.

Japanese Rice Farmer (plate #15A) by Willy Seiler
(etching)

Back of Japanese Rice Farmer (plate #15) by Willy Seiler
(etching)

Seiler issued his print designs in two distinct editions.  The main edition would be printed in black or sepia ink, whereas the other one would be a smaller edition hand-colored with watercolor.  Anita Lorenz said that Seiler would handcolor at least one etching himself, but that he used assistants (including Anita) to do most of the handcoloring according to his color specifications.  The size of the edition (labeled “pieces” ) generally would be printed on the back of etching.  The back of the etching would also list a “plate number.”   
 
Some dealers have confused this with the print number within the stated edition.  Seiler, however, did not individually number his prints.  Rather, this plate number operated as a code or catalog number for the print design.  Thus, plate number “15” is unique to all the “Japanese Rice Farmer” etchings, rather than suggesting that the print is #15/180.  The print itself originally would have been originally issued in a folder that also bore the number “15.”  It is not uncommon years later, however, to find a particular etching mistakenly stored in folder for a completely different design.   The use of the “A” suffix after the plate number (e.g., “15A”) indicates that the etching was hand-colored.

Original folder for Rice Threshing (plate #17) by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of Artelino.com
(folder and etching)

All of Seiler’s etchings bearing a plate number below 100 are in a standard size of 12.5” x 15.25” (or 15.25” x 12.5”).  Seiler’s etchings which are smaller are generally not numbered and their edition size is unknown at present, but extent folders for such prints are labeled with plate numbers above 100.  Many of these smaller etchings were issued as holiday greeting cards or as calendar prints.  Seiler also produced a series of postcard sets featuring reduced versions of his commercial etchings.

[Trees by Riverbank] (c. 1953) by Willy Seiler
Personal Collection
(calendar etching)

[Sailboat] (pre-1954) by Willy Seiler
Personal Collection
(oil painting)

[Sailboat] (pre-1954) by Willy Seiler
Personal Collection
(etching used on the May 1954 calendar page)

Little is currently known about Seiler’s private life.  He was known to have been a pet fancier (three dogs and a cat) and a fan of movies.  He also played bridge and raised chickens.  In 1964, he designed seals for the Tokyo Olympics, the last dated work I could find, but they came out too late to be used.

Olympic Seal (1964) by Willy Seiler

According to his nephew, Willy had "some problems" in Japan and permanently left the country sometime in the late 1970s or in the 1980-1981 time period with a German Jewish concentration camp survivor he had been living with for some while.  (Anita Lorenz said she thought they were married, but could not be sure.)  They settled near the East German border at what seems to have been his partner's place.  He also spent some time in Berlin, ultimately publishing a book in 1981 that promoted the peaceful unification of East and West Germany.  Seiler, however, produced no further artwork after he returned to Germany, and he died there in 1985.
 
Willy Seiler (c. 1950s)

Shrewd Bartering (plate #67A) by Willy Seiler
(hand-colored etching)

Fisherman (plate #64A) by Willy Seiler
(hand-colored etching)

Since Willy Seiler’s output of monochromatic and colored etchings exceeded 200 prints, it is too large to be included in this post.  But seeing as there is no comprehensive listing of Seiler’s prints in the literature or on the Internet, I have decided to host a catalog inventory of his prints elsewhere, which can be accessed through the following links:

Rice Planting (plate #55) by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of Artelino.com
(etching)

Japanese Children by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of F. Richard Miller
(oil painting)

Japanese Children (plate #6A) by Willy Seiler
(hand-colored etching)

This catalog is still very much a work in progress, and I welcome additional information or images, especially for plate #10 (Farmer and Mount Fuji) and #71 (Old Indian), either colored or uncolored.

Fisherwomen Dragging Net by Willy Seiler
Courtesy of Floating World Auctions
(oil painting)

Fisherwomen Dragging Net (plate #4) by Willy Seiler
(etching)

For more information on Willy's brother Rudolf Seiler and his daughter Anita Seiler, please see my separate post on these artists.  My sincere thanks to Waynor and Laurie Petrie Rogers who, in addition to providing me with numerous images of Seiler prints found in their collection, also graciously shared the information that they had amassed over the years about Seiler’s life and work.  Without such material, the working inventory that I had compiled would have been woefully incomplete, and this post would have been perfunctory at best.  Thanks also to Merrill Holmes who provided several additional salient details.  Special thanks goes to Werner R. Seiler and Anita A. Lorenz, who provided important family biographical information and corrected many errors in my earlier drafts.

Willy Seiler in front of his studio in Karuizawa (c. 1950s-early 1960s)
Courtesy of Petrie-Rogers Asian Fine Arts & Antiques

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27 comments:

  1. I recently made this purchase on eBay thinking that these were actual Seiler etchings, but now that I have them in hand I see that they are merely copies, perhaps some kind of photograph. If you look at the listing you will see that there is also a photo of a man with 3 women in Japanese dress which may be Willy. There is another photo of just a woman in Japanese dress which is not shown in the listing. Have you ever come across any other prints like this?
    https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Japanese-28-Drawings-ART-Album-from-1952-Beautiful-/283477122810?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=TkwPrCLqWrAt7OrgM5t79zwkAYQ%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc

    Hoping to hear back from you.
    Fran Walker

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  2. It is difficult to tell what the items are that you have from the eBay images. At first blush, they look like black and white etchings, but, unless there are plate impressions, they can't be etchings. The seller called them drawings, but I'm assuming that you ruled that out as well. My best guess is that that are some sort of photomechanical reproductions, although I have never seen such things before for Seiler's prints. I suspect the man in the photo is Seiler.

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    1. A true mystery. The images in these prints are 6 x 8 inches and one is of #10, Farmer and Mt Fuji if you would like me to scan it for you. There are prints of 1,2,7,8,9,10,12,14,15,17,18,19,21,23,24,25,26,27,28,30,32,36,42, and 43.
      As you can imagine, I was hoping for actual etchings so was quite disappointed to see these. C'est la vie.
      Thanks so much for your speedy reply. I was going to resell the etchings but have no use for these so let me know if you would like them.

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    2. I guess I’m blessed to own this painting. (Road to Karuizawa) I never really knew it’s significance till now. I have many etchings, but so glad I got this painting at auction when I did.

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  3. Hello I have 55a beautiful painting also another with no documentation but easily my fave can you help me figure out her name?

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    Replies
    1. If you send me an image of what you have to the e-mail address at the upper right corner of the page, I'll see what I can do.

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  4. My father was the General Manager of the Seizan Hotel in Karuizawa (see map insert in this article) when he met Willy Seiler while he was operating the doll factory there. Our family of four lived on premises at the hotel year round (like Eloise!) during this magical time and my 90 year old mother still remembers the charming Mr. Seiler...who also conned them out of a $400.00 loan then disappeared! That was a lot of money back then and my parents even hired a PI to try to track him down, an ex-Yakuza recommended by another friend, and well...that's a whole other story! I am still in possession of a Seiler doll in perfect condition as I had graduated to Barbie soon after I received it from Mr. Seiler as a gift. Reading this article was really wonderful. Reaching the end of the posting to see a photo of him just as I remembered him was touching. Thank you!

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for taking the time to write. It's always good to hear from people who actually met in person some of the artists on this blog.

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  5. So we are buying our home from my father-in-law and he is retired from Marine Corp. At one point his family and he were stationed in Japan for several years. At one point my husband was fluent in Japanese. I came across 2 etching by Willy Seiler the 1st being the Japanese Rice Farmer and the 2nd titled Silk Spinner. They are both signed and titled on the front and the back left corner is stamped then their is hand writing inside the box. THE Japanese Rice Farmer I believe was written lot #15 of 180. As I had mentioned before we are getting ready to purchase this and I just want to make just I am getting enough home owners insurance to cover the pictures. Would you be able to give me a very very rough estimate on their worth? They also have a Dragon Tapestry that I e been told that is over way over 100 years old. Would you be able to steer me in the direction of someone that would be able to date it and tell me its approximate value? If I can figure out how to attach pictures to this then I will do so. Thank you for any help you can give me.

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  6. I have written you privately. As a rule, Seiler's prints are not highly collectible and do not fetch much in the marketplace. The colored etchings are more valuable than the black and white etchings, and the ones with pretty girls tend to sell better than the landscapes or one with men or older woman. Of course, condition can also affect value.

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  7. I have a signed etching from willy seiler art srudio .... Post officw boxa 10 karuizawa nagano Japan

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  8. Its black and white with two sailing ships

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    1. Unknown - Check out Etching #120 on the link found in the article. I suspect that is your etching.

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  9. Thanks for wonderful article. This is the best article of Willy Seiler. I am writing short article of Korean market landscape that Willy Seiler made. Big Thanks from South Korea.

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    1. Darrel,
      Thank you - loved the article - always wondered about the background of the "Heartbroken" painting my parents purchased while visiting Mt Fuji (my Dad was stationed in Tokyo after the Korean War). The painting now hangs in my den.

      Bruce Bryant
      Atlanta, Georgia

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  10. I have a hand colored signed Siler etching. The View from Lake Hokone. It is in its original black lacquer slim frame. This is the first time I found such detailed info. I suppose I should send the photos to an auction house. Twenty years ago it was worth a $4,500 retail. Maybe someone in Japan in a San Francisco auction might want it.

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    1. Unfortunately, you probably paid more than ten times what the etching would fetch today.

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  11. We spent our summers in Karuirzwa when I was a child as my father was stationed in Tokyo . I was there from 1950-1953. We came home with a set of etchings/cards and 3 oil paintings..His daughter also made two charming pictures for me...a dog and fox. actually one of the paintings is a landscape of the woods near where we stayed. interesting memories. I believe the Olympic stuff did not get used???

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    1. I'm afraid that I can't confirm or deny whether his Olympic seal design was used.

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  12. Thank you for this article. New to me even though you posted it in 2016.
    I have a couple of his smaller signed prints. I note you say not worth a lot but still interesting to read the background. My grandfather was stationed in occupied japan after ww2.
    And after reading your article, realized I may have three of his dolls as well. The dolls were separate in a box with a bunch of other dolls but the style of three of them look very much like what you pictured.
    Thank you for the information.
    David

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    1. Glad you found it helpful. Although written in 2016, it's been updated several times since then as new information has come to light.

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  13. Several years ago I was helping clear out a friend's late Dad's storage unit and came across a couple of Willy's etchings (30A "The Public Bath" and 36A "Youthful Geishas") in their original folders which he let me keep. Also there was a two-page "About The Artist" brochure with them. Just wondering if you happen to know a time frame for these etchings and are you familiar with this brochure?

    Thank you and I await your reply.

    PS: Thanks for putting together this background story on Mr. Seiler.

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    1. I’ve seen a couple of versions of those artist information sheets, but they all pretty much contain the same information. His prints are not dated, but wee produced from about the late 1940s to the mid 1950s (except perhaps for the handful of European ones which I assume were done earlier),

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  14. I have the Pearl Collector etching. A gift from a friend whose father worked with the Navy, designing the Flying Higgins. A war time, rescue sailboat that could be launched into the sea from an aircraft. I cherish the print. Thank you for the biographical of the artist

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