Visit India - Howrah Bridge Calcutta Indian State Railways - Vintage Railroad Travel Poster by William Spencer Bagdatopoulos c.1930 - Japanese Unryu Rice Paper Art Print 24 x 32 in

Pacifica Island Art uses an environmentally-friendly Unryu Japanese rice paper made by the Awagami Factory in Tokushima, Japan. Unryu, which translates to 'cloud dragon paper' in Japanese, features long strands of kozo fiber and is made from natural mulberry and hemp fibers using traditional Japanese Washi techniques - ABOUT THE ARTIST - William Spencer Bagdatopoulos - William Spencer Bagdatopoulos (1888-1965) was a painter and commercial artist, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is known for his Orientalist renditions of people and monuments in the East. Born of mixed Greek-English parentage on the island of Zante, Greece, in 1888, he spent his childhood in the Netherlands. He entered the Academie van Beeldende Kunsten, Rotterdam (the Rotterdam Art Academy) at age 11. At the age of sixteen he travelled to what was then called the Near East, painting in Egypt and Palestine, and going on to study art for another year at the Athens Academy (1906–07). He traveled and worked in Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, returning to London in 1908 at the age of 20, where he studied and started working as an artist, painting commissions for portraits, illustrations, murals, and posters for business houses, shipping companies, and the railways. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Arts, England in 1909, and was a medalist at the National Competition of 1913 in South Kensington. In 1928, Bagdatopoulos moved to the USA, becoming a naturalized U. S. citizen. He settled in Santa Barbara, California working as an artist, chiefly painting portraits. He also worked as a set designer for stage and film. He turned later in his career to 'the more demanding discipline of printmaking, producing a considerable body of works in both etching and drypoint'.