Hosoda Eishi (細田栄之) (artist 1756 – 1829)
Courtesan seated at a writing desk from the album Spring in the Four Directions (Yomo no haru - 四方の巴流)
ca 1796
12 in x 7.5 in (Overall dimensions) color woodblock print
Signed: Eishi zu (栄之図)
Seal: Chōbun (鳥文)
Harvard Art Museums
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Chester Beatty Library This print is from the series Spring in the Four Directions (Yomo no haru - 四方の巴流). In 1795 Tsutaya published a less-than-successful volume under this same title "to commemorate the appointment of the leading kyōka-master Yomo Utagaki Magao to the position of senior judge of kyōka. Of the 7 artists commissioned to make contributions to this book only two were well known: Rinshō and Masayoshi. Other edited versions came out with a shifting group of images and artists.
Another album (the only copy I have traced is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) is in two volumes with three prints in each." Later "The third of these variants contains three prints only: the Eishi, the Masayoshi 'Frozen lake' and the Hokusai 'Ferry-boat'."
Source and quotes from: The Art of the Japanese Book by Jack Hillier, vol. 1, p. 442. This includes a half-page, black and white reproduction of the same Eishi print in the Lyon Collection.
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The poem reads:
The world of peace and pleasureThe Museum of Fine Arts in Boston refers to this as a Chinese couplet by Tenchū Sanjin.
The eternal capital of the realm of desire
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Ray Cao and Zewei Feng in an article published by the Rhode Island School of Design translated the title Yomo no haru (四方の巴流) as 'Spring is Everywhere'.
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Illustrated:
1) in a small black and white reproduction in The Art of Surimono: Privately Published Japanese Woodblock Prints and Books in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin by Roger Keyes, vol. I, #385, p. 442.
2) in black and white in The Art of the Japanese Book by Jack Hillier, vol. 1, Sotheby's, page 443.
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The first four characters read: 昌平樂圖. 昌平 (shōhei) translates as 'peace' or 'tranquility'. 樂 can mean 'comfort'. 圖 (zu), of course, is 'picture'. The name 'Senchin' is 山人.
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The curatorial files at the American Museum of Asian Art, in reference to the volumes entitled 'Yomo no haru' in the Pulverer Collection say: "Also concurrent with Haru no iro were the kyōka books entitled Yomo no haru... which were compiled by the Sukiya-ren, a kyōka group spearheaded by another poetry master, Shikatsube no Magao (1753–1829), and published annually by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. The Pulverer Collection has a 1795 edition of this work, to which the artists Kitao Masayoshi (Kuwagata Keisai), Suzuki Rinshō, Sō Shizan, Santo Kyōden, Watanabe Gentai, and others contributed. These illustrations convey the refined, elegant realm that was in keeping with surimono and seem to mark a zenith among color woodblock-printed books."
picture book (ehon - 絵本) (genre)