Hawk

This painting of a hawk perched on the branch of an old tree and possibly eyeing some prey below was once the left half of a pair of paintings (see its original mate below). The hawk’s feathers, meticulously rendered in fine brushwork over various shades of ink wash, reflect the influence of artist Kano Yukinobu’s better-known older brother, Kano Motonobu (1476–1559), the second-generation head of the powerful Kano house, which dominated Japanese painting circles from the 1500s to 1800s. A key subject in the Kano repertoire, birds of prey were symbols of power and might that would have appealed to one of the Kano house’s military patrons.