DANJURO AS TOKIMUNE GORO - MOTOMATSU

Ichikawa Danjuro as Goro sharpening a gigantic arrow on a Mimasu seal. Nothing is known of the artist. Motomatsu is known only by this striking design. Exceptionally rare. Illustrated Ward 100 Surimono at #79.

The Looking Glass - Yashima Gakutei

A meticulously detailed brush drawing in sumi, on thin Japanese paper of an elaborately dressed courtesan wearing a kimono adorned with a leaping carp, admiring herself in a floor mirror. She is watched by a young farmer, still carrying his hoe. Circa 1862

Yashima Gakutei  was a Japanese artist and poet who was a pupil of both Hokkei and Hokusai. Gakutei is best known for his Kyōka poetry and surimono works.

 Gakutei was born in Osaka around 1786, though his exact year of birth is somewhat unclear. He was the illegitimate son of a samurai known as Hirata who served under the Tokugawa shogunate. Gakutei's mother later married into the Yashima clan, explaining the artist's name. For some time, he worked in Osaka, focusing chiefly on woodblock prints called surimono in addition to book illustrations. Most of what is known about Gakutei has been surmised from the subjects and context of his work.

Gakutei is noted for the quality in his wood printing works and for his general contributions to the body of ukiyo-e artwork. Specifically, critics have noted his technical prowess and precision, his skill in embossing, and that his specialization in surimono exceeded that of his teacher, Hokkei. Some of his work included a set of five woodblock prints featuring young women performing gagaku, a traditional kind of court music from the Heian period. Each woman plays an instrument: a reed called a shō, a woodwind called a ryūteki, a koto, a stringed instrument called a biwa, and a drum called a tsuri-daiko. Gakutei also illustrated an entire book called the Kyōka Suikoden related to the translated Chinese novel Suikoden. Gakutei also created landscapes and seascapes for books, which are rare pieces amongst Hokusai's pupils.
Gakutei is also known for his prolific writing; he wrote many humorous poems called kyōka and used them in his artwork and prints. Additionally, he was responsible for a Japanese translation of Journey to the West, for which he also completed illustrations.

Osaka Surimono - Ashiyuki Gigado

A fine surimono of two Kamigata actors in character reading a hand scroll.

Gigadō Ashiyuki (戯画堂 芦幸^?) was a designer of ukiyo-e style Japanese woodblock prints in Osaka, who was active from about 1813 to 1833. He was a pupil of Asayama Ashikuni, and was also a haiku poet. Ashiyuki is best known for his ōban sized (about 14 by 10 inches or 36 by 25 centimeters), prints of kabuki actors, although he also illustrated books, and designed surimono.

The Salt Maiden - Suzuki Harunobu 1770

Against a steely grey ground a study of Matsukaze, on of the "brine maidens", carrying her pails. Her name is inscribed on the title label of an inset picture of a book.
Suzuki Harunobu (1725? – July 7, 1770) was a Japanese woodblock print artist, one of the most famous in the Ukiyo-e style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints (nishiki-e) in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Harunobu used many special techniques, and depicted a wide variety of subjects, from classical poems to contemporary beauties. Like many artists of his day, Harunobu also produced a number of shunga, or erotic images. During his lifetime and shortly afterwards, many artists imitated his style. A few, such as Harushige, even boasted of their ability to forge the work of the great master. Much about Harunobu's life is unknown.

Still Life - Kikukawa Eizan (1787 - July 17, 1867)

This is a beautiful still life by Kikukawa Eizan (1787 - July 17, 1867).

Narcissus flowers and a red lacquer tea caddy in a silk bag decorated with Pawlonia leaves.

Eizan was a designer of ukiyo-e style Japanese woodblock prints. He first studied with his father, Eiji, a minor painter of the Kanō school. He then studied with Suzuki Nanrei (1775-1844), an artist of the Shijō school. He is believed to have also studied with the ukiyo-e artist Totoya Hokkei (1790-1850). He produced numerous woodblock prints of beautiful women in the 1830s, but then abandoned printmaking in favor of painting.
Eizan was the most prolific, longest-lived and ultimately the best of the late followers of Utamaro, who attempted to carry on the master's bijin style after his death in 1806. Along with Kikumaro, Tsukimaro and Utamaro II, Eizan has generally been dismissed by connoisseurs as a plagiarist of Utamaro's late style, but his work in fact develops, like that of most ukiyo-e artists, from a close identification with a leading master to a studied independence, and contains pieces of remarkable beauty and interest. ukiyo-e artists with whom he is often associated, Eizan was not an actual pupil of Kitagawa Utamaro, but studied originally with his father, Kikugawa Eiji, a Kano style painter and fan maker, and later with the Shijo artist Suzuki Nanrei and the Hokusai pupil Hokkei. Few traces of this eclectic training can be seen in Eizan's early work, produced shortly after the death of Utamaro and for the most part in that master's style. In the following decade, however, as Eizan reached artistic maturity, he began to develop his own figural style, still focused for the most part on prints of beautiful women (bijin-ga). Eizan's work retains the sensitivities and lyricism that marks the Utamaro style, however, not following the earthier realism and more overt sensuality of Kunisada and Ikeda Eisen in their . Eizan, like Toyokuni I in actor prints, is the last manifestation of the classical ukiyo-e style in bijin work, with harmonious colors and graceful lines and subjects. After him, one senses the introduction of a different aesthetic, with harsher colors, angular lines and less ethereal material, more of an emphasis, in sum, on the material weight of earthly life, rather than its transformation into something of elegance. With Eizan, the alchemy of elegance is still alive, and in his best work, properly produced, he can cast a magic glow over the forms of the world and create lightness and grace. He is also left-handed, which was strange at such a time in Japan.