Hawks by a Stream [left of a pair]

Birds of prey became a favorite subject of members of Japan’s warrior class beginning in the 1400s and 1500s. When applied to large-scale paintings like folding screens, such images, which express notions such as military prowess, power, and valor, made for a particularly impressive backdrop for warriors’ receptions rooms. Soga Nichokuan, like his father, Soga Chokuan (Nichokuan literally means “the second Chokuan”), specialized in images of birds, especially hawks and other birds of prey, whose textured feathers they described using a meticulous layering of various tones of ink wash. The hawks of Nichokuan and his father owe a great deal to older Chinese and Japanese paintings . But Nichokuan, particularly in late works like this one, placed these more conservative birds into surreal landscapes of knobby, wildly twisting trees, jagged boulders, and sometimes bizarre water features.