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Keisai Eisen

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  1. Print from the series A Tokaido Board Game of Courtesans by Keisai Eisen, Image 1.

    Keisai Eisen

    Print from the series A Tokaido Board Game of Courtesans, c. 1820s

    Japanese woodblock print

    14 x 9 in (35.56 x 22.86 cm)

Keisai Eisen was an 18th-19th century Japanese woodblock print designer, painter, and kabuki playwright. Eisen went by many pseudonyms during his career and published a variety of images including landscapes, portraits, and images of animals. Eisen helped contribute to the Ukiyo-e ruikô, otherwise known as the History of Prints of the Floating World, a text compiled and edited over multiple centuries documenting the lives of eminent ukiyo-e artists. In his writing Eisen characterized himself as a decadent and a heavy drinker, spending lots of time in the brothels whose inhabitants he depicted.

During the 17th-19th centuries, printmaking in Japan was dominated by the ukiyo-e (“floating world”) style, which began during the Edo period (1603-1868). These works celebrated recreation and leisure within the rising middle class and were generally produced in great numbers by a team of artists, with each step of the printing process delegated to a different person. While Eisen was a print designer, that does not necessarily mean he was directly involved in every step of the print making process.