Born in what is now the city of Tarumizu, Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan in 1874, little Eisaku moved to Azabu in Tokyo with his family at the age of four or five when his father, a pastor, was appointed as an instructor in English at the Naval Academy. In 1887 the young Wada entered the Protestant Meiji Gakuin ; among his classmates was fellow yōga painter Miyake Kokki, while author Tōson Shimazaki was in one of the years above. After learning the rudiments of Western-style painting from Uesugi Kumatsu, with his introduction, dropping out of Meiji Gakuin in 1891, he studied alongside Miyake and Nakazawa Hiromitsu under Soyama Sachihiko at his Daikōkan painting school. After his untimely death the following year, Wada studied alongside Miyake at Harada Naojirō's Shōbikan; the same year his work featured at the 4th Meiji Bijutsu-kai Exhibition, as it did at the 5th the following year. In 1893 he also studied Nihonga, under Kubota Beisen. After Harada's painting school closed in 1894, Wada studied under Kuroda Seiki and Kume Keiichirō, on their return from Paris, at their newly established Tenshin Dōjō, where he became versed in pleinairism. Kuroda was not alone in being struck by his student's precocious abilities; at the following year's Fourth National Industrial Exhibition, for his Early Summer Beside the Sea, Wada Eisaku carried off a Second Prize. In 1896 Wada was involved together with Kuroda and Kume in the establishment of the Hakuba-kai or "White Horse Society", submitting nineteen pieces for the 1st Exhibition that year; he would continue to submit paintings for their exhibitions until the 12th, in 1909, even during the time he was in Europe. That same year, when Kuroda became Professor in the newly formed Department of Western-Style Painting at the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts, Wada, alongside Fujishima Takeji and Okada Saburōsuke, were appointed Assistant Professors; however, the following year he resigned from his post, enrolling as a student in the same department, with special dispensation to enter as a fourth-year student, whence he then became the first to graduate, his graduation piece being his 1897 Evening at the Ferry Crossing. He spent half the next year guiding Adolf Fischer, future founder of the Museum of East Asian Art, around various locales, including the Kinai and Hokuriku regions and Kyūshū. In 1899 Wada took up Fischer's invitation to assist with the cataloguing of his burgeoning collection of Japanese art, and travelled to Berlin; this was the time of the Berlin Secession. In March 1900 he moved to Paris, where he saw his Evening at the Ferry Crossing at the Grand Palais during the Exposition Universelle. There he studied, like Kuroda, Kume, and Okada, under Raphaël Collin, at the Académie Colarossi, sponsored by the Monbusho. From Autumn 1901 to Spring the following year, Wada stayed in Grez-sur-Loing with Asai Chū, where they painted and penned their Grez Diaries. His Thoughts of Home appeared at the 1902 Salon organized by the Société des Artistes Français, while he sent Kodama back home for the Fifth National Industrial Exhibition, in 1903, where again he was awarded a Second Prize. Returning to Japan, via Italy, also in 1903 he was appointed Professor at his alma mater. The following year he exhibited a landscape at the St. Louis World's Fair. In 1907 he was appointed one of the judges at the Tokyo Industrial Exhibition, where he was awarded a First Prize for his Setting Sun, and also of the inaugural Bunten exhibition. That same year, he married Takahashi Shigeko. In 1911 he painted the ceiling of the Imperial Theatre, as well as murals for its dining room. In 1914 he was appointed one of the judges at the Tokyo Taishō Exhibition, exhibited at the Kōfū-kai Exhibition, and painted murals for the Akasaka Detached Palace and Tokyo Station. In 1919 he became a member of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy. The following year he travelled again to Europe, returning the next, after his involvement in the display of Japanese works in an exhibition organized by the French government. In 1922 he was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 4th Class, and the following year membership in the Légion d'honneur, with the rank of Officier. The same year he was appointed one of the judges at the second Chōsen Art Exhibition . In 1925 he transferred his official place of residence from Kagoshima to Tokyo. The following year one of his paintings was included in the 1st Exhibition in Honour of Shōtoku Taishi and that year, in 1929, in 1936, and again in 1941, he was the subject of one-man shows at the NihonbashiMitsukoshi. In 1932 he became President of the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts. In 1933 he became a member of the Historical Sites, Places of Scenic Beauty, and Natural Monuments Examining Committee. In 1934 he became an Imperial Household Artist. In 1936 he completed his Ceremony for the Promulgation of the Constitution for the Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery. In 1937 he became a member of the Imperial Art Academy. For three years from 1940 he was involved in the copying of the wall paintings of the Hōryū-ji kondō. In 1943 he was a recipient of the Order of Culture. In 1945 he evacuated to what is now Yamatokōriyama in Nara Prefecture, then to Chiryū in Aichi Prefecture. In 1951 he was recognized as a Person of Cultural Merit. That same year he moved to Shimizu in Shizuoka Prefecture, where he passed away in 1959, posthumously receiving the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 1st Class.
Works
Representative works include his early Evening at the Ferry Crossing, Thoughts of Home, and Kodama ; his mid-life series of portraits; and his late Ue-no-Midō and Summer Clouds. He painted many still lifes with flowers, especially roses, and a number of views of Mount Fuji. His Evening at the Ferry Crossing depicts a family of farmers at the Yaguchi crossing of the Tama River, strikingly illuminated, according to art historian Harada Minoru, through his "skillful manipulation of evening light". Kodama, inspired by the classical sculptures in the Louvre, and translated alternatively by Harada as Echo, is said to combine French Academism with German Expressionism as a "complete restatement and settlement" of Wada's period of study abroad; in Harada's words, it "evokes a Romantic sensuousness through gentle shading of the figure and barely visible handling of the brush"; the painting has also been likened in effect to Munch'sScream.
