Katsushika Ōi

Katsushika Ōi (葛飾 応為)

Katsushika Ōi in the middle of the 1840s.
Born c. 1800 (exact date unknown)
Edo (present-day Tokyo), Japan
Died c. 1866 (exact date unknown)
Nationality Japanese
Known for Painting, Ukiyo-e
Notable work

Three Women Playing Musical Instruments (c. 1818–1844)[1] Operating on Guanyu's Arm (c. 1818–1854)[2] Mount Fuji through a bamboo forest (date unknown)[3]

Beauty Fulling Cloth in the Moonlight (date unknown)[4]
In this Japanese name, the family name is Katsushika.
Nightscene in the Yoshiwara (吉原格子先之図) by Katsushika Oi
Kinuta or Beauty Fulling Cloth in the Moonlight by Katsushika Oi
Kinuta or Beauty Fulling Cloth in the Moonlight (19th century Edo period) by Katsushika Oi

Katsushika Ōi (葛飾 応為, c. 1800 – c. 1866), also known as Sakae (栄), was a Japanese Ukiyo-e artist of the late 19th century Edo period. Her mother was the second wife of Hokusai. Not only did Ōi work as a production assistant to her father, but she was also an accomplished painter in her own right.[5][6] There are multiple theories as to the origin of her name, including Ei (her given name), Ei-jo ("jo" meaning "woman" or "daughter" in Japanese), O-i ("loyal to itsu"), and O-Ei (お栄, honorary 'O' as a prefix for women's names in 19th century Japan).

Life

Ōi's birth and death dates are not known. She was a daughter of the ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760—1849), and there are stories that say she was born in his 37th year.[7]

She is believed to be born around 1800, as one of the daughters of Hokusai by his second wife. In her immediate family, she is believed to have a younger brother Sakujiro and a sister Tatsu, and from Hokusai's first wife, an older step-brother and two step-sisters (yet another account only indicates a total of four Hokusai children). Ōi was married to Minamisawa Tomei, and they studied ukiyo-e under the tutelage of Tsutsumi Torin. She divorced Minamisawa to assist her father in his old age as he developed palsy. She is the only daughter of Hokusai who is said to have been by her father's side when he died in 1849. After her father's death, she retreated to Asakusa, but accounts are not clear where she lived until her death around 1866.[8]

Of the testimony that remains about Ōi, Tsuyuki Iitsu, a pupil of Hokusai's in the master's later years, described her as having an eccentric personality like her father and a charitable disposition—she had ambitions to become a female xian sage. She is said to have married a merchant of taste, but divorced him because she found him to be a comically poor artist; she returned to her father's home and never remarried.[7]

After returning to live with Hokusai, Ōi assisted him in his artwork and took to producing her own. Of her bijin-ga portraits of beauties Hokusai is said to have told people, "The bijin-ga I paint myself are no match of for Oei's."[lower-alpha 1][7]

Ōi whereabouts and status become unknown within a few years of her father's death.[7]

Works

Ōi is known to have excelled at handwriting and in bijin-ga paintings of beautiful women. The following is a selected list of her works.

She has also been credited as an illustrator for the following books.

Legacy

Few of Ōi's works are known: amongst them, a few nikuhitsu-ga paintings, the illustrations to the book Onna Chōhō-ki (女重宝記, 1847) by Takai Ranzan (高井 蘭山), and no prints.[7]

Canadian novelist Katherine Govier wrote a first-person novel about Ōi titled The Ghost Brush (2010,[11] also titled The Printmaker’s Daughter).[12]

The story of Ōi was adapted as the manga Miss Hokusai (百日紅), which was itself adapted into an award winning anime in 2015.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ (Japanese) 「自分が描く美人画は阿栄にはかなわない」[7]

References

  1. ↑ "Three Women Playing Musical Instruments". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  2. ↑ "Operating on Guanyu's Arm". The Cleveland Museum of Art. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  3. ↑ "Mount Fuji through a bamboo forest". Blouin Art Sales Index. Retrieved 2 January 2014.
  4. ↑ "Late Kinuta-da beautiful view". Tokyo National Museum.
  5. 1 2 Ōi, Katsushika (1829). Senzai Hyakunin isshu yamato-kotobuki 千歳百人 一首倭寿.
  6. ↑ Machotka, Ewa (2009). Visual Genesis of Japanese National Identity: Hokusai's Hyakunin Isshu. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-90-5201-482-1.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kamiya 2006, p. 116.
  8. ↑ Govier, Katherine (2011). The Printmaker's Daughter: a novel (First ed.). New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-200036-1.
  9. ↑ ""Courtesans Showing Themselves to the Strollers through the Grille" by Katsushika Oi". Ota Memorial Museum of Art. February 2014. Retrieved 8 November 2014.
  10. ↑ Kobayashi Tadashi and Julie Nelson Davis. "The Floating World in Light and Shadow: Ukiyo-e Paintings by Hokusai's Daughter Oi". in Carpenter, J. T. et al (eds). Hokusai and his age: Ukiyo-e painting, printmaking and book illustration in late Edo Japan. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing. 2005.
  11. ↑ Hanrahan 2010.
  12. ↑ Tanabe 2011.
  13. ↑ "Director Keiichi Hara Wins Asiagraph 2015 Tsumugi Prize for Miss Hokusai Film". Anime News Network. August 11, 2015. Retrieved October 19, 2015.

Works cited

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