Daruma

Daruma is a print associated with Kawanabe Kyosai bearing the date 1801, a date that predates the artist's birth in 1831 and almost certainly reflects a transcription convention or a misattribution in the source record; the design is in any case part of the wider Daruma iconography that Kyosai treated repeatedly throughout his career. Kyosai trained briefly with the Utagawa master Kuniyoshi and then in the Kano school, and across his long working life he returned often to the figure of Daruma, the Indian patriarch traditionally credited with founding Chan, or Zen, Buddhism and renowned in East Asian art for the long meditation that left him without legs. Daruma's wide-eyed gaze, beetling brows, and red robe made him a favorite subject in popular Japanese painting and printmaking, where his image carried associations of perseverance and ironic humor in equal measure. Kyosai's Daruma compositions typically combine sympathetic Buddhist iconography with the caricatural energy for which the artist was celebrated, treating the patriarch sometimes as a venerated devotional figure, sometimes as a comic protagonist surrounded by courtesans, fellow drinkers, or shamisen players in a clear inversion of monastic decorum. The brushwork brings to bear the speed and economy that made Kyosai a star of the public shoga-kai performances of his day. The impression discussed here is documented through the Artsy listing for the print on the secondary market (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/kawanabe-kyosai-daruma), which preserves a record of the design under the artist's name. The published 1801 date should be treated with caution and is reproduced here as supplied in the working record.