Elizabeth Keith was born in Scotland and unlike Miller, Lum or Hyde had little parental support. She prided herself on being a self-taught artist. However if it had not been for the marriage of her sister to the Tokyo Publisher J.W. Robertson Scott, she might never have left England or developed into the artist we know today. An intended holiday in 1915 turned into a wandering stay of nine years in Asia.
Her first professional exhibition was Grin and Bear It, Keith's caricatures of Tokyo's social luminaries, published as a Red Cross fund-raiser. Shosabura Watanabe became her publisher although Keith spent two years learning the techniques of carving and printing. At a time when woodblock prints were considered outmoded, Keith produced over 100 signed, original pieces. Keith personally supervised the printing but depended on Watanabe for production and distribution. She never had a fixed address saying her watercolor kit, her friendships and her sketchbooks were her sole companions. She returned to England in 1924 where she embraced Christian Science perhaps in reaction to the disorientation many travelers feel when they return home.
She was back in Asia from 1932 to 1933, during which time she mastered color etching. In 1935, she made a last desperate trip to Japan to fill sketchbooks for a projected series of prints realizing the intimations of a war couldn't be ignored. In 1936 and 1937, she had two major exhibitions in America. But in these years leading up to WWII, the popularity of Oriental things plummeted and Keith expended her energies raising money for the suffering women of China. Financial reversals piled on personal troubles including the deaths of close friends, exhibition cancellations and difficulty collecting payments for prints already sold. In 1940 with 16 years to live, Keith's extraordinarily productive career was brought to an abrupt and untimely end.
Abstracted from Elizabeth Keith:The Printed Works, Richard Miles, Pacific Art Museum, 1992
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