Isoda Koryūsai (礒田 湖龍斎, 1735–1790) was a Japanese ukiyo-e print designer and painter active from 1769 to 1790.
Koryūsai was born in 1735 and worked as a samurai in the service of the Tsuchiya clan. He became a masterless rōnin after the death of the head of the clan and moved to Edo (modern Tokyo) where he settled near Ryōgoku Bridge in the Yagenbori area. He became a print designer there under the art name Haruhiro in 1769, at first making samurai-themed designs. The ukiyo-e print master Harunobu died in 1770, and about that time Koryūsai began making prints in a similar style of life in the pleasure districts. [1]
Koryūsai was a prolific designer of individual prints and print series, [1] most of which appeared between 1769 and 1881. [2]
In 1782 Koryūsai applied for and received the Buddhist honour hokkyō ("Bridge of the Law") [1] from the imperial court [3] and thereafter used the title as part of his signature. His output slowed from this time, though he continued to design prints until his death in 1790. [1]
Koryūsai's known designs total 2500, or an average of four a week. According to art historian Allen Hockley, "Koryūsai may ... have been the most productive artist of the eighteenth century". [2]
The series Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsumoyō, 1776–81) ran for 140 prints, the longest ukiyo-e print series of beauties known. He designed at least 350 hashira-e pillar prints, numerous kachō-e bird-and-flower prints, a great number of shunga erotic prints, and others. [1] 90 of his nikuhitsu-ga paintings are known, making him one of the most productive painters of the period. [2]
Despite the Koryūsai's productivity and popularity—both in his time and amongst later collectors—his work has attracted little scholarship. [4] The first ukiyo-e histories written in the West in the 19th century elevated certain artists as examplars; Koryūsai work came to be seen as too indebted to Harunobu, who died in 1770, and inferior to Kiyonaga, whose peak period came in the 1880s. [3] An example is Woldemar von Seidlitz's Geschichte des japanischen Farbenholzschnittes ("History of Japanese colour prints", 1897), the most popular of the early ukiyo-e histories, which paints Koryūsai as a successor to Harunobu and a rival of Kiyonaga's in the 1770s who slipped into mediocrity and imitation of his rival by the end of the decade. [5] Interest lay mainly in the details of Koryūsai's life—a samurai who received court honours was unusual in the proletarian world of ukiyo-e. [3] In 2021, contemporary woodblock printmaker David Bull created a series of 12 prints depicting nature scenes adapted from Koryūsai's designs. [6] [7]
His work is held in the permanent collections of several museums worldwide, including the British Museum, [8] the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, [9] the Carnegie Museum of Art, [10] the Princeton University Art Museum, [11] the Minneapolis Institute of Art, [12] the University of Michigan Museum of Art, [13] the Hermitage Museum, [14] the Suntory Museum of Art, [15] the Israel Museum, [16] the Krannert Art Museum, [17] the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [18] the Philadelphia Museum of Art, [19] the Honolulu Museum of Art, [20] the Museum of New Zealand, [21] the Brooklyn Museum, [22] the Ashmolean Museum, [23] the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, [24] the Freer Gallery of Art, [25] the Indianapolis Museum of Art, [26] the Chazen Museum of Art, [27] the Portland Art Museum, [28] and the Kimbell Art Museum. [29]