---

Biography

Sources: A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Laurance P. Roberts, Weatherhill, 1976, p. 52; The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, Amy Reigle Newland, Hotei Publishing Company, 2005, p. 504; Wikipedia Japan http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%98%87%E6%96%8E%E4%B8%80%E6%99%AF

Little is known about this artist's life.  He was a student of Utagawa Hiroshige III (1842–1894) and was active between 1860 and the late 1870s. He produced meisho-e of a radically changing Tokyo and comic scenes (giga) of Edo Life in the early Meiji Era, such as Comic Scenes of Thirty-six Famous Places in Tokyo (Tōkyō meisho sanjūroku gisen, 1871-1872). His most famous work was the series Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo (Tōkyō meisho shijūhakkei, 1871), an example of which is shown below.

By the calculations of Hatakeyama Yutaka, a curator at the Machida City Museum in surburban Tokyo where he organized in 1992 the only exhibition ever held on the the art of Shōsai Ikkei, the artist left a total known oeuvre of 132 prints (of which 24, or one fourth, were triptychs) plus six picture-books, all in color woodblock.

From this..., we learn only that Ikkei took a liking to the work of Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795), founder of the Shijō School, and hence traveled to Kyoto to study.  He applied himself with diligence, but then decided to retire from the world.  Only later - presumably now in Tokyo after the Restoration - did he respond to the entreaties of publishers and begin to produce numerous works.