Bartlett studied art at the Royal Academy of Arts, London and the Academie Julian in Paris, then traveled in Brittany, Italy and the Netherlands for several years, creating watercolors and etchings.

In 1913 he planned a 5-6 year trip to Asia with his wife. Traveling through India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the couple arrived in Japan via China in the autumn of 1915, where he visited the Watanabe Print Shop with sketches and watercolors from his travels. He practiced his print underdrawings with Japanese style brushes and through a trial-and-error process with Shozaburo Watanabe, he published a series of landscape prints of India and Japan in 1916.

He left Japan in 1917. En route to England he stopped in Honolulu, where he settled. His exhibitions of watercolor paintings and woodblock prints were well received in Honolulu and soon Bartlett became a central figure in the art world of Honolulu. He returned to Japan in 1919, and the Watanabe Print Shop published sixteen works, including some with Hawaiian subjects. During the 1920s and 1930s he had a number of individual shows in Hawaii and on the mainland. In 1933 he established the Honolulu Print Makers. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 1939.

The subject of Hawaii, The Surf Rider, 1919 is thought to be Duke Kahanamoku (1890-1968) the world's greatest swimmer, two-time Olympic winner (1912 and 1920) and patron saint to surfers and swimmers worldwide.

(Two images, one on each side of the paper) Surf-Riders, Honolulu and The Surf Rider, both color woodcuts by Charles W. Bartlett, 1919. Poster size: 18 x 24 in. Image size: 13 1/2 x 19 1/2.