Keisai Eisen (渓斎英泉) (artist 1790 – 1848)
Kakemono-e of a courtesan on parade
ca 1835
9.5 in x 28 in (Overall dimensions) Signed: Keisai Eisen ga
渓斎英泉画
Publisher seal: Sanoya Kihei
(Marks 446 seal 25-210)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna - dated to ca. 1840 - signed 'ōju Eisen ga' (應需英泉画)
Historisk Museum, University of Oslo - 4th one down the page A courtesan with elaborate hairpins and a huge comb on parade wearing an exotic kimono embroidered with chrysanthemums, butterflies and Mandarin ducks. Her obi is decorated with exotic birds among flowering plum blossoms.
There are other copies of this composition in the Chiba City Museum of Art and the Worcester Art Museum.
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As a side note, there was a literary movement, called 'the Mandarin Ducks and butterflies school', started in Shanghai, China in the early twentieth century. It "...refers to the sentimental romances or love stories that blossomed during the 1910s." The reason we are mentioning this is because Mandarin ducks and butterflies have been inextricably mixed together in East Asian concepts of faithfulness and marital bliss. Therefore, it is not all that unusual to find the two motifs together on this Eisen kakemono from the 1830s in Japan.
Kakemono-e - 掛物絵 (genre)
Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
beautiful woman picture (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)