Kitao (Keisai) Masayoshi

Kitao (Keisai) Masayoshi
Keisai Soga, 1820
3063-BK

10 5/8 x 7 1/4 in. (27 x 18.5 cm)

Albrecht Durer's (1471-1528) drawing of a geometrical man was an amazing--startling, even--object to the early 16th century consciousness. His "Symmetria partium" humanorum corporum (1537) was a masterpiece, and a key piece of revolutionary visionary thinking. The first two pages of this book are both front and back of a man on a grid very similar to that of Durer. Masayoshi cleverly illustrates men and women on different activities as wrestling, dancing, fishing, horse riding fighting, and daily chores. Also there are images of an octopus and flowers as well. A very fine copy with very subtle color printing.

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Kitao (Keisai) Masayoshi
Sansui Ryakuga-Shiki, 1800
2281

10 5/8 x 7 5/8 in. (27 x 19.5 cm)

see chapter #34. This is a confusing matter beacuse Masayoshi was really Keisai listed above as artist of the Keisai Sogan. Kuwagata Keisai lived from 1764 to 1824,He changed his name at the end of the eighteenth century when he shifted from Ukioye style to quite different styles. He is the man who retired and became a lay monk and lived in Edo. This is a superb book whatever its simple purpose. The color woodblock printing is wonderful, the subjects smallish and often several to a page. The delicate fading-away of colors is characteristic of it; so is the texture which may very well be achieved by the dust method, and another noticeable point of style is the frequency with which form is given as a brush stroke apparently, without clear outline. Thus it is technically a wonderful work and a very faithful reproduction in woodcut of brush drawing - and a considerable pleasure to look at. In the second half of the book we have large subjects spreading over double pages, a whole succession of them, of great success and visual excellence; especially one could mention the view across a bay with a rising or setting sun slightly hidden by streaks of mist, and coastal villages in the foreground with a temple and mountains to the left. These are wonderful inventions and the coloring perhaps unequalled in these books for its quiet shading and attention to texture. Though Hilier has little to say about Keisai or Masayoshi surprisingly, there is a very relevant paragraph on page 113 where he especially mentions another of his books from 1801 but with reference particularly to the various methods for producing a kind of half tone or gradation of tone on the blocks and what he calls 'a granulation of the ink tone when printed'. Both qualities are certainly present in the Sansui Ryakuga-Shiki. Mitchell, page 460-1.

Price Upon Request