Beautiful Woman Enjoying Firefly Catching

Chobunsai Eishi (1756-1829) was an ukiyo-e painter in the late Edo Period. He established his own style of portraits of slender beauties. Eishi was in rivalry with Kitagawa Utamaro, a contemporary artist of the time, and they competed with each other for popularity. Most of the women depicted by Eishi have an air of elegance and grace about them, which is supposedly coming from the painter’s high birth. This painting also portrays a slender woman enjoying firefly catching. Everything except the woman’s skin and her hair ornament is painted with pale ink, producing a scene at night with gleaming light of fireflies. This style of painting using only subdued hues of dark and pale ink and grey for underlying tone with a tint of a few colors, avoiding use of vivid colors is a method of expression called “benigirai” (omitting bright vermilion) which was popular in the late Tenmei to Kansei era (around the end of 18th century). Eishi used the method in fashion at the time to represent the night scene.