Miyagawa Shuntei (宮川春汀: 1873-1914) (artist mid 1870s - early 1910s)
Watanabe Morikichi (original family name)Links
Biography:
"A student of illustrator and bijinga (beautiful woman) specialist Tomioka Eisen (1864—1905), Shuntei made his reputation with domestic scenes showing children and women's customs. The softness in mood is matched by a subtlety in technique featuring an almost transparent application of color and embossing."
Quoted from: Color Woodcut International: Japan, Britain, and America in the Early Twentieth Century, essay by Kendall Brown, p. 18.
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Scholten Japanese Art wrote of this artist:
"Miyagawa Shuntei studied with the nanga painter Watanabe Shoka (1835-1887) and later with Tomioka Eisen (1864-1905), the prolific and popular artist famous for his kuchi-e (frontispiece illustrations for novels and periodicals). Like his teacher, Eisen, who sought to become a 'real' painter at the end of his short life of forty-one years, Shuntei attempted to gain acceptance as a painter by submitting his work to national competitive exhibitions. In 1899 an art critique wrote that one of his works might only be appreciated by women or children (Merritt & Yamada, Woodblock Kuchi-e Prints: Reflections on Meiji Culture, p. 208). It seems Shuntei took this criticism to heart: from the following year on, he produced numerous kuchi-e, a format largely marketed to the female audience. In a strange coincidence, Shuntei, like Eisen, died at the age of forty-one."****
Merritt and Yamada in their Guide to Modern Japanese Woodblock Prints: 1900-1975 on page 91 say that Shuntei was born in Aichi prefecture. They also show that he studied with Watanabe Shōka and Tomioka Eisen.
