Edutainment > Eisen Ikeda - 1790-1848

The courtesan Tsukasa

Eisen Ikeda is famous for his images of beautiful courtesans, called bijin-ga. And while the women depicted by Kitagawa Utamaro look more like skinny fashion models on a perpetual yoghurt diet, the girls designed by Eisen are normal, even a bit sturdy, and clad in a lush, richly decorated kimono -   unless the great master preferred to depict them without clothes.

Keisai Eisen is another name of this artist - to be found in the ukiyo-e literature.

A Pupil of Kikugawa Eizan

Eisen Ikeda was born in Edo (Tokyo) as the son of a calligrapher. His first art teacher was a lesser known artist named Hakkeisai. Later he became a student of the famous ukioyo-e artist Kikugawa Eizan.

Beautiful Prostitutes, Naughty Pictures and ...

The main subjects of Eisen Ikeda prints and book illustrations are the so-called beautiful women pictures of prostitutes and shunga - sexually explicit images. The third speciality of the artist were landscapes prints. Art critics place some of his landscape prints next to Hokusai.

... an Unfinished Landscape Series

Aizuri Print

One of the last landscape prints he worked on, was the series of the 69 Stations of the Kiso Highway, which was originally not meant as a collaboration work. But the artist had some dispute with the publisher and quit the job after having finished 24 prints. To rescue the series and the investment of the publisher, Hiroshige was commissioned to finish the series.

After about 1830 the artist created aizuri-e. These were ukiyo-e printed only in shades of blue. They were a kind of popular fashion in the 1830s and 1840s. Aizuri-e are coveted by today's collectors and therefore expensive.

Was Eisen Ikeda a Pimp?

Eisen Ikeda was also active as author of a book titled Zoku ukiyo-e ruiko, a supplement to a compendium of the history of ukiyo-e.

In this book Keisai Eisen describes himself as a hard-drinking and dissolved guy who was the owner of a brothel in the 1830s. The brothel later burned down.

Many of the ukiyo-e artists were rather bohemian guys who bragged about their numerous love affairs and their macho-behavior like going on drinking binges. The later artist Toyohara Kunichika was another good example of this mentality.

Literature sources used for this Eisen Ikeda biography

• Richard Lane, "Images from the Floating World", Konecky & Konecky, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, 1978, ISBN 0-914427-54-7
• Laurance, P.Roberts, "A Dictionary of Japanese Artists", John Weatherhill Inc., New York, 1976

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