Charles W. Bartlett was an English woodblock print artist, watercolorist, and etcher born in Bridgeport, Dorsetshire, England. At twenty-three, Bartlett enrolled in the Royal Academy in London, where he studied painting and etching. Three years into his studies, he transferred to the Academie Julian in Paris, where he studied under artists Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. 

Following the tragic death of his wife and child in 1889, Bartlett spent several years traveling throughout the Netherlands, Brittany, and Venice with fellow artist Frank Brangwyn. After nearly a decade, he returned to England and remarried. Bartlett continued producing watercolors, etchings, and oil paintings (mostly scenes of Brittany and Holland), exhibiting various works at the Royal Academy and the Salon des Beaux-Arts. With increasing recognition and outstanding success, he helped found the Société de la Peinture a l'Eau (Water Painting Society) in Paris in 1908. In December of 1913, the Bartletts took an extended vacation to India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, China, and Japan. During their stay in Japan, Bartlett met publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, and between 1916 and 1919 collaborated on a set of twenty-one travel prints featuring landscapes and genre scenes. Satisfied with his work, Bartlett and his wife decided to return home in 1917 by way of Hawai'i and the United States. However, they chose to remain in Hawai'i for the rest of their lives. According to Watanabe's records, Bartlett produced a total of thirty-eight prints, the last of which, Hour of Prayer, India, was dated 1925. 

He became a co-founder of the Honolulu Printmakers and a prominent member of the Hawaiian artistic community until his death in 1940 at the age of eighty. Subject matter includes various depictions of continental Asia, including tropical coastlines, mountainscapes, temple architecture, and indigenous peoples.