Like many European artists from the French Impressionists onward, Paine was influenced by Japanese art.     It can be seen in his simplicity of outline and composition and in the use of flat areas of bright colour.   Of his poster for the 1921 boat race, for example, the author of the Modern Printmakers blog says: ‘Boat race 1921 was inconceivable without the example of Hokusai …’ (See POSTERS London Transport) Paine acknowledged his debt to Japanese art in a lecture delivered at the Blackheath School of Art in February 1939 (probable date),one of a series on the theme of ‘The Victorians and After’. He said that [the] change to effective poster art [was] largely the result of the study of the Japanese colour print with its superlatively simplified and telling design. (Blackheath Local Guide)

In 1926, while he was in Santa Barbara, his friend Teuila (Isobel Field) gave him a copy of On the Laws of Japanese Painting by Henry P. Bowie (1911).   It is inscribed ‘To Charles Paine from his admiring, grateful pupil and friend Isobel Field   Serena Aug 10th 1926’