説明

初期の英泉は艶本でも、淫乱斎、千代田淫乱、寿気人、女好、好色山人、好色斎などと、頻頻と隠号を変えているが、幾ら隠号を変えても、板下が自筆だし、癖のある字体なので、すぐそれとわかる。傑作、名作の相ついだ時代だが、相変わらず英泉は特殊な場合を除き、自筆板下を継続し、それが英泉の艶本の特色ともなっていた。

渓斎英泉 (けいさいえいせん：1791～1848))，浮世絵師。画号に国春楼、隠号に淫乱斎などがある。士分の子として生まれ、仕官するが讒せられて流浪。北斎の弟子善次郎（後の渓斎英泉）として、当時の風俗がコミカルに描かれている。

この後菊川英二宅に寄寓し、英二の子である英山の門人格として画業に就く。初期には役者絵もあるが、やがて美人画に本領を発揮し、独特の濃厚な色香を漂わせる美人大首絵を数多く描く。風景画にも技量を有し、狩野派風筆致の作品と並び、洋風風景画に特色を示す。

Japanese syuga 【CURIOSA,Erotica】LUSTFUL FUN（INRAKU）by Keisai Eisen

yoko-e 11×17cm,20p, From the late Bunka era (1804-19).10 annotated ukiyo-e spring paintings constitute a spectacular scene of lewdness. They are overprinted with color woodblocks and have exquisite details. They are unrecorded and have been made public for the first time.

Keisai Eisen（1790-1848）：The son of the calligrapher and poet Ikeda Shigeharu, Eisen studied painting with Kano Hakkeisai, a senior student at the Kano Eisen-in studio. He later boarded at the house of the genre painter, Kikugawa Eijiri where he met Eijiri’s second son, the artist Kikugawa Eizan (1787-1867).  he became Eizan’s student who gave him the name Eisen in 1816.

From the late Bunka era (1804-19) onwards many illustrations for the various genres of popular literature as well as surimono and a large output of single-sheet prints of women, including some fine bust portraits, exploring the world of the unlicensed pleasure quarters of Edo in his own rich, seductive style. Also many illustrations to erotic works.

Eisen painted a relatively large number of hanging scrolls of beauties, sometimes with particularly large (half life-size) figures drawn so that they appear to get larger the higher up the body they are viewed, giving them very vivid presence. The eyes are set wide apart with particularly luxuriant lashes and the pupils always glancing off to one side, but otherwise the faces are not unlike those painted by Eizan.

Although Eisen was born into a samurai family which would have accorded him some social status, he experienced a painful fall from grace triggered by the deaths of first his father and then his stepmother only months apart in 1810. At the age of 20, Eisen was forced to find ways to support himself as well as three younger half-sisters.

He began producing shunga the following year, relatively early in his artistic career. Unlike his contemporaries in the studio of Utagawa Toyokuni (1769-1825) who was chastened by a crackdown in 1804 by the authorities and apparently forbade his students to produce shunga for a considerable period.

Eisen designed shunga albums and novels with his own text, narratives and even his own calligraphy. Although the lavish shunga publications were mostly produced under pseudonyms, his distinctive style was easily identifiable and invited scrutiny which eventually forced him to give up his samurai rank.

MEIGETSU CO., LTD is one of the leading international art dealers specializing Chinese, Japanese, himalayan art and CURIOSA（erotique art）, As a regular member of JADAN (Japan Art Dealer Association),We guarantee all artifacts to be genuine as described. It is our policy never to deliberately list fakes as genuine. All art listed will always stated as such.

Instead of focusing on a particular domain, Galerie meigetsu concentrates on collecting peculiar and rare fine arts objects with exclusive provenance, presenting museum-quality collectibles from  Asia and Europe. Items are sourced from old noble collections and all objects are not shown anywhere else before being exhibited at the gallery.

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