Rooster and Family

The numerous extant paintings of chickens and roosters by Itō Jakuchū include a number of heavily pigmented examples such as this work, which focuses on the interactions between the members of a feathered family. As here, Jakuchū draws our eye with the dynamic shape of the rooster’s tail feathers and the birds’ colorful plumage. The depiction of chickens and roosters was a lifelong passion for Itō Jakuchū, a prolific painter and devout Zen Buddhist. An inscription on his tombstone written by a close friend, the Zen monk Daiten, records that Jakuchū kept an assortment of fowl and frequently made sketches of them.