are a type of "primitive" ukiyo-e style Japanese woodblock prints. They were usually printed in pink (beni) and green, occasionally with the addition of another color, either printed or added by hand. The technique developed in the early 18th century out of an earlier hand-coloring method that relied mainly on a red-orange pigment called tan, sometimes combined with yellow and blue; tan was gradually replaced by beni, a pink-red dye extracted from the safflower plant (Carthamus tinctorius), which became the technique's dominant colour and gave benizuri-e their name. Throughout the roughly twenty years of their popularity, from the 1740s to the 1760s, the number of woodblocks used per print gradually increased but remained below five. The technique was refined chiefly through private commissions such as surimono and calendars, before being adapted for the wider commercial market that nishiki-e would later dominate.
The production of benizuri-e reached its peak in the early 1740s. Torii Kiyohiro, Torii Kiyomitsu I, Torii Kiyonobu I, Okumura Masanobu, Nishimura Shigenaga, and Ishikawa Toyonobu are the artists most closely associated with benizuri-e.
Gallery of benizuri-e
Notes
References Lane, Richard. (1978). Images from the Floating World, The Japanese Print. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ; OCLC 5246796 Newland, Amy Reigle. (2005). Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints. Amsterdam: Hotei. ; OCLC 61666175 Roberts, Laurance P., A Dictionary of Japanese Artists, Tokyo, Weatherhill, 1976, 218.