 Sekien, although trained in the upper-class Kanō school of Japanese painting, had become in middle age a practitioner of ukiyo-e and his art was aimed at the townspeople in Edo.His students included haiku poets and ukiyo-e artists such as Eishōsai Chōki.Utamaro's first published work may be an illustration of eggplants in the "haikai" poetry anthology "Chiyo no Haru" published in 1770.