Itō Jakuchū 伊藤若冲 (1716–1800)

Chicken Family by Bamboo Grove

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Hanging scroll, ink on silk

Seals: (Top) Tō Jokin in 藤女鈞印 »The seal of Tō Jokin«
(Bottom) Jakuchū koji 若冲居士 »The lay monk Jakuchū«

This is an unusual ink painting by the artist Itō Jakuchū (1716 –1800), depicting one of his favorite topics, that is, a family of chickens by a growth of bamboo. While Jakuchū became famous for his paintings of chickens, this painting has two seldom-seen features: the use of the horizontal format and the medium of silk. For these reasons alone, this painting is a remarkable example of Jakuchū’s late period.

The painting shows a standing rooster on the left, raising his long tail around as he turns back to face his family. The rooster, with his sharp, jagged claws and cutting edges is a study of sharp angles, created in striking, dark ink tones. In contrast, the hen, looking up from her seated position, is emphasized by rounder lines and soft ink modalities. Two of the chicks are protected under the wing of their mother, and a third runs up to the father, to accept a proffered object—perhaps an insect?

The painting exhibits several trademark features of Jakuchū’s bird paintings. For example, we see an effort at building up striking contrasts between the males and females, combined with simple narratives based on those contrasts. The birds are consciously, even dramatically, gendered, with the males flaunting their masculine attributes as they prance across the paintings. While this may or may not relate to Jakuchū’s own ambiguous sexual persuasions, it undeniably adds to the drama of his bird paintings, which never become a static assortment of non-communicating birds.

Another interesting feature of the painting is his remarkable use of ink modalities and washes. This skill is sometimes overlooked in our appreciation of the artist, but there are few artists with as great a mastery of ink as Jakuchū. Here, for example, we see the expert washes in the background, where the shading has been applied just outside of the bamboo trunks or of the rooster tail feathers—and indeed in the dozens of shades and textures he uses across the surface of the painting. The feather patterns of the rooster, for instance, while utterly unrealistic, nonetheless convince the viewer with their organic mixture of brush techniques and ink patterns.

While there are other examples of similar compositions and representations of fowl,1 the unusual features of this hanging scroll painting lie, as stated above, in its horizontal format (which makes it rather suitable for tea ceremony hanging) and its silk medium. Examples of either of these characteristics alone do exist, but they are rare; Jakuchū’s own preferences for ink chicken paintings were the vertical format and paper.2 As such, the unusual features of this painting may relate to special circumstances, perhaps a special order made by a member of Jakuchū’s extensive circle of friends and high-ranking patrons. The material of silk signifies a higher cost, at a time when Jakuchū had limited resources.3 This certainly would have been a fitting and gratefully received present for anyone: a small and refined ink painting on silk of chickens, a theme that had made Jakuchū one of the most famous painters of his generation.

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