Background
Eizan Kikugawa (菊川英山 1787-1867) was one of the masters of the Japanese print in Edo. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, he developed a new typology for bijinga (pictures of beautiful women: 美人画). Although some of his early work was dependent on the style of his great predecessor Kitagawa Utamaro (1753-1806), to dismiss Eizan as a mere imitator would seriously undervalue his achievement. Each artist had different concerns about how to portray women. For Eizan, it was the expressive depiction of fûryû (fashionable: 風流) in seemingly countless ways that took precedence over the psychological explorations that signaled one of Utamaro's innovative achievements. Both Utamaro and Eizan used the term fûryû in the titles of series or single-sheet designs, but with a notable difference in frequency. Utamaro included it in only 13 series for a total of approximately 82 separate sheets, or less than four percent for all formats. In contrast, Eizan used fûryû in the titles of at least 123 series in ôban designs (representing the vast majority of all his print formats) for a total of at least 500 separate sheets or approximately 37 percent of the artist's total recorded ôban sheets.
Nearly all ukiyo-e artists emulated other print designers and painters at the beginning of their careers, and many borrowed details or entire compositions well into their mature working periods. While still only in his early twenties, Eizan assimilated elements of the Utamaro style, but soon afterwards introduced a re-imagined vision of the female face and form that was uniquely his own. The print-buying public recognized this, for when Eizan abandoned his youthful forays into portraying kabuki actors and dedicated himself entirely to depicting Edo beauties, success was almost instantaneous, and his fame as a bijinga master reportedly spread beyond the environs of Edo.
Eizan's earliest style (c. 1806-08) for the female face relied on a pronounced oval with a tapered chin, a long straight nose, and thick arched eyebrows. Around 1808-1813, the face became fuller and slightly less elliptical, with the nose sometimes inclining toward the aquiline and the lower lip occasionally larger than the upper one. Then, during the period that many consider Eizan's finest (1814-1817), the bijin face became thinner, with a delicacy and an indefinable calm that some have nicknamed "doll-face." This style is also conspicuous for its reversal of amplitude, when the physiognomy narrowed slightly, at least for a few brief years.
Design
Our design is from a set titled Fûryû seirô bijin Mu Tamagawa no uchi (Fashionable beauties along the Six Tama Rivers, 風流青褸美人六玉川之内) representing a popular poetic theme in Japanese art and literature. Also called the "Six Crystal Rivers," 六玉川 or 六玉河), the grouping was also a popular subject in ukiyo-e prints. The six provinces were associated with classical poems on the following places: Ide (Hagi) no Tamagawa in Yamashiro; Mishima (Tôi or Kinuta) no Tamagawa in Settsu; Noji no Tamagawa in Omi; Kôya no Tamagawa in Kii; Chôfu no Tamagawa in Musashi; and Noda (Chidori) no Tamagawa in Mutsu. In Eizan's reworkings of the theme, the scenes depict beautiful courtesans in elegant dress and alluring manner. For more, see Mu Tamagawa.
Eizan's prints in this series are unusual for their horizontal ôban formats. Here, a courtesan is seated on a bench, her long pipe (kiseru) propped against her thigh. Yamabuki (Japanese yellow rose, Kerria japonica) bloom around her. In the distance across the river, a Heian-period courtier on horseback is accompanied by four servants. The portrayal of a modern day beauty with an aristocrat from a long ago era (782-1184) is an example of mitate (見立), the blending of the contemporary with the historical or the vulgar with the refined (zoku, 俗 and ga, 雅), thereby creating imaginative, simultaneous, and multiple layers of meanings.
The poem (Kyôka or playful verse, 狂歌) by Fujiwara Hakizuki (possibly a member of the Shûchôdô club), reads:
Tsuryu musubu / yae-yamabuke no / hanaikada / ki o kumi nagasu / Ide no Tamagawa
A tethered boat, floating on a raft of double-layered yamabuki flowers, draws water, drifting away, down the Ide Tama River
Our impression, which has excellent color, is a lovely example of Eizan's pictures of beautiful women (bijin-ga 美人画) from the mid-1810s.
Eizan's numerous works can be found in the collections of leading institutions, such as the British Museum; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; Museum für Kunst & Gewerbe, Hamburg; Honolulu Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Museo d'Arte Orientale, Venice; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Tokyo National Museum; USC Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Note: Some of the preceding text was adapted from John Fiorillo's web page Eizan Kikugawa.
References:
- Kondo, Eiko: Eizan: Nippon ukiyo-e hakubutsukan shozô. (Eizan: Collection of the Japan Ukiyo-e Museum). Japan Ukiyo-e Academy (eds.), 1996, p. 103, no. 285.
- Kondo, Eiko: Il Monda di Eizan (The World of Eizan). Genoa, Rome, and Venice: 1991-1992, pp. 175-176, no. 90.
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