Almost nothing is known about the artist who signed himself Gabimaru (or Utamasa), but his paintings and erotic books date from the late Kansei to the Bunka era. He painted beauties with faces in the style of Utamaro (1754-1806) and with elongated, willowy bodies and a rather modest, quiet manner reminiscent of Hosoda Eishi (1756-1892). Because he sometimes signed himself Chobun Gabimaru, scholars once thought he might be Eishi, who also signed himself Chobunsai Eishi. More recently there has been an attempt to identify him as Maki Bokusen of Nagoya, although Bokusen's few extant paintings are not quite similar enough to justify this theory. Gabimaru is best known for his painting of a geiko in the Tokyo National Museum (see Narazaki, Utamaro, Nikuhitsu ukiyoe vol. 6 [Tokyo: Shueisha, 1981], pl. 60).