Genroku Yamatonishiki

Hello from Shukado.

Have you noticed the special topic in Japanese Fine Arts . com (Shukado's web site) had chaged.
Now we feature "Genroku Yamatonishiki " by Kawanabe Kyosai .
The series represents warriors from Akoroshi when they conducted a raid in 1702.

   Kawanabe Kyosai, "Genroku Yamatonishiki, Okajima Yasoemon & Kurahashi Densuke"  $1013.00

Here depicted is the brave look of Okajima Yasoemon Tsuneshige and Kurahashi Densuke Takeyuki, both Akoroshi members, in a fight. In an elaborate depiction, ash spill out from a brazier thrown in from the enemies, half covering the title script. Struggling in the heated carbon and ash, they are bravely managing to put their enemies down.

    Kawanabe Kyōsai(1831–1889) was a Japanese artist, in the words of a critic, "an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting".

Living through the Edo period to the Meiji period, Kyōsai witnessed Japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. Born at Koga, he was the son of a samurai. After working for a short time as a boy with Utagawa Kuniyoshi, he received his artistic training in the Kanō school, but soon abandoned the formal traditions for the greater freedom of the popular school. During the political ferment which produced and followed the revolution of 1867, Kyōsai attained a reputation as a caricaturist. He was arrested three times and imprisoned by the authorities of the shogunate. Soon after the assumption of effective power by the Emperor, a great congress of painters and men of letters was held at which Kyōsai was present. He again expressed his opinion of the new movement in a caricature, which had a great popular success, but also brought him into the hands of the police this time of the opposite party.
Plese check his other works here!