Keisai Eisen Prints
1790–1848 · Japanese · Ukiyo-e
Wall art by Keisai Eisen, restored in-house and printed to order on heavyweight matte fine-art paper.
48 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
About Keisai Eisen
Keisai Eisen was born in Edo in 1790 as Ikeda Yoshinobu, the son of a samurai who was also a calligrapher and painter. He trained first with the Kanō-school painter Kanō Hakkeisai, from whom he took the name Keisai, and later with the ukiyo-e artist Kikukawa Eizan. He became best known for bijin-ga, pictures of beautiful women, including large-head portraits that show the fashions of the 1820s with a frank, worldly air rather than the poised elegance of earlier beauties. In the mid-1830s he began The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō, the series of views along the inland road from Edo to Kyoto, designing its opening prints and about two dozen in all before Utagawa Hiroshige took it over and completed it. His designs for the road mix landscape with lively scenes of travellers, from cormorant fishing at night to the women of the post-town inns. He died in 1848.