Keisai Eisen (1790-1848)
Travellers and farmers on a road during cherry blossom time. In the background Mount Fuji.
Title: Ômiya shuku, Fuji enkei (The station Ômiya, Mount Fuji in the distance)
Series: Kisokaidô (rokujûkyû tsugi) (69 Stations of the Kisokaidô Road) – No 5
Signature: Keisai ga
Publisher: Takenouchi Magohachi (Hoeidô), with publisher's seal
Date: 1835-36
Size: Oban, 22,5 x 34,7 cm
Rare, very nice and precise early imprint, with Eisen's signature and the Hoeidô seal of the publisher which had been left out later when Hiroshige continued the series together with the publisher Kinjudô.
With relief printing in the cherry blossoms of the trees in the foreground. Red colour of the dress and seal and the rosé of the cherry blossoms a little bit faded, all other colours, also the delicate yellow, are very good. The road in the foreground is printed in yellow passing into a light and darker blue. Later editions show in the foreground a darker blue-green road.
With wide, full margins. Throughout a little bit creased, smoothed, no central fold. At all in a very nice, clean condition.
Strange pp 59 (about the series) and p 162, No 5 (without signature). Ukiyo-e Taikei vol. 15, No 5 (Fig. shows a later edition without Hoeidô seal and without signature, and with the dark foreground). Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Spaulding Coll. No 21.4799 (like our edition).
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