1756/1829. Eishi was the eldest son of a samurai family belonging to the Fujwara clan in Edo. Provided with a regular income, he first studied painting with the official teachers of the Kano school, and then became a household official and court painter in the service of shogun Tokugawa leharu (1737—1786). At the age of thirty, he resigned this socially highly respectable position and turned to the popular ukiyo-e style, becoming a pupil of Bunryusai and the Torii school. Like Utamaro, Eishi liked to paint women: either idealized girls in idyllic settings, or courtesans from Yoshiwara, which was developing its own distinctive culture as a pleasure quarter. Eishi s oeuvre includes shunga — erotic pictures — as well as prints with themes taken from Japanese and Chinese mythology, and romantic scenes. He modelled himself first on Kiyonaga, then on Utamaro. He found his own artistic expression, however, in pictures full of elegance and aristocratic noblesse — pictures that were so highly regarded that they were even shown to the imperial family. One picture, entitled "Sumidagawa Landscape", was even owned by Empress Gosakuramachi.
From Hillier J ., Japanese Colour Prints , Phaidon, 3 rd edn,1993