“Six Selected Beauties of the Green House (Seiro Bijin Rokkasen)” is the name of a collection of paintings, created by Chobunsai Eishi (1756-1829), a Japanese Printmaker. Eishi was interested in the genre of ‘Ukiyo-e,’ which specialized in images from the entertainment world. The ‘Ukiyo-e’ genre grew and flourished in the urban centers of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto, and represented an idea of a growing, modern, and young Japan. Most ‘Ukiyo-e’ style paintings represented kabuki, courtesans, and geisha or sumo wrestlers and were more popular in the merchant class. Chobunsai Eishi however, belonged to the privileged class and was a Samurai, the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. This may have helped Chobunsai’s popularity, as the people of his class supported him. He even became well- known to the imperial class. At one point, Empress Gosakuramachi of Japan bought Chobunsai’s work titled “Sumidagawa Landscape,” which was an honor for the humble ‘Ukiyo-e’ artist.
True to the ‘Ukiyo-e’ genre, the “Six Selected Beauties of the Green House” depicts six courtesans from Yoshiwara brothels. These six women represent six flowers. Eishi’s six beauties, unlike other women in the then paintings, do not show any emotions on their faces and are instead calm, demure, and almost immobile. There is no fluidity in their poses or features. Many critics claim that this is because Eishi belonged to the Samurai class and his ideal woman was a Samurai woman, who did not show her true emotions on her face (much like a Victorian woman).
The paintings “Six Selected Beauties of the Green House,” created in 1794 or 1795, are the full-length illustrations of women in their flowing, rich, beautifully intricate kimonos. All the six women are shown engrossed in their thoughts, one holding a pen, with her face resting on her palm, another showed the courtesan Kisegawa looking at scrolls. In fact, these images do not look very different from the ones Eishi painted as illustrations for the book “The Thirty-Six Immortal Women Poets.” The distinguishing feature of the collection is the flower (a different one for each of the women) on the title scroll of each of the paintings. For Example, the painting of courtesan Kisegawa depicts the flower Poppy on the Title cartouche.
In his 40s, Eishi Chobunsai’s depiction of the female figure started to change. His women reached extreme heights. By the 1790s, the artist’s women surpassed those of all other contemporary painters, in their elegance and elongation. However, his style soon came under heavy criticism due to the long faces of the women he painted. Eishi became so disillusioned by this criticism that he left printmaking and went back to making scrolls and alcove painting for the rich. On October 30, 1997, Sotheby’s London sold “Hanaogi of Ogi-ya” from “Six Selected Beauties of the Green House (Seiro Bijin Rokkasen),” as ‘Highly Important Japanese Prints.’