Kikukawa Eizan

Kikukawa Eizan was a designer of ukiyo-e style Japanese woodblock prints. He first studied with his father, Eiji, a minor painter of the Kanō school, and subsequently with Suzuki Nanrei, of the Shijō school. He is believed to have also studied with ukiyo-e artist Totoya Hokkei. He produced numerous woodblock prints of beautiful women in the 1830s, but then abandoned printmaking in favor of painting.
This artist should not be confused with Harukawa Eizan, an ukiyo-e print designer who was active in the 1790s.
Eizan was the most prolific, longest-lived and ultimately the best of those late followers of Utamaro who attempted to carry on the master's bijin style after his death in 1806.
Along with Tsukimaro and Utamaro II, Eizan has generally been dismissed by connoisseurs as a plagiarist of Utamaro's late style, but his work in fact develops, like that of most ukiyo-e artists, from a close identification with a leading master to a studied independence, and contains pieces of remarkable beauty and interest.
As Eizan reached artistic maturity he began to develop his own figural style, still focused for the most part on prints of beautiful women.