Katsukawa Shun'ei

In this Japanese name, the surname is Katsukawa.

Katsukawa Shun'ei (Japanese: 勝川 春英; 1762 – 13 December 1819) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist.

Shun'ei's real surname was Isoda (磯田), and his father was a landlord named Isoda Jirōbei (磯田 次郎兵衛).

Shun'ei belonged to the Katsukawa school of artists; his earliest work dates to 1778. He designed mainly yakusha-e portraits of kabuki actors, and began producing ōkubi-e bust portraits as early as 1791. Together with Toyokuni I he illustrated the five-volume kabuki guide called Shibai kinmō zue ("Illustrated Guide to the Theatre") by Shikitei Sanba. He also made musha-e warrior prints and prints of sumo wrestlers. In c. 1800 he took over as head from his teacher, Shunshō. His most prominent students were Katsukawa Shuntei and Katsukawa Shunsen. Shun'ei and several other artists, including Utamaro and Toyokuni, were jailed and manacled for 50 days in 1804 for producing prints depicting Toyotomi Hideyoshi based on the Ehon taikōki ("Illustrated Chronicles of the Regent").

• Prints by Shun'ei
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References

Works cited

• Kobayashi, Tadashi (2006). Ukiyo eshi retsuden 浮世絵師列伝. Bessatsu Taiyō (in Japanese). Heibonsha. ISBN 9784582944938.
• Marks, Andreas (2012). Japanese Woodblock Prints: Artists, Publishers and Masterworks: 1680–1900. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4629-0599-7.

Further reading

• Davis, Julie Nelson (November 2007). "The trouble with Hideyoshi: censoring ukiyo-e and the Ehon Taikoki incident of 1804". Japan Forum. 19 (3). Routledge: 281–315. doi:10.1080/09555800701579933. S2CID 143374782.  – via EBSCO's Academic Search Complete (subscription required)

External links

• Media related to Katsukawa Shun'ei at Wikimedia Commons