白鶏図|Rooster, Hen, and Chicks

Nagasawa Rosetsu 長澤蘆雪|Minagawa Kien　皆川淇園

late 1780s · Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Asian Art

The rooster, representative of the patriarchal head of the family—per the Confucian ideal—was a popular subject in Chinese and Japanese painting of the premodern era. Here, the birds are silhouetted in negative white against a background of gray ink wash. Together with Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) and Soga Shōhaku (1730–1781), Rosetsu was known as one of the “Three Eccentrics” (san kijin) of eighteenth-century Kyoto. He studied with Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), founder of Kyoto’s Maruyama school.

Artist

Nagasawa Rosetsu 長澤蘆雪|Minagawa Kien　皆川淇園

Date

late 1780s

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink on paper

Culture

Japan

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

The Harry G. C. Packard Collection of Asian Art, Gift of Harry G. C. Packard, and Purchase, Fletcher, Rogers, Harris Brisbane Dick, and Louis V. Bell Funds, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, and The Annenberg Fund Inc. Gift, 1975