Itō Jakuchū

Ito Jakuchu painted birds, flowers, fish and insects with a precision and colour that still look startlingly modern. Roosters were his favourite subject, painted with every feather sharply patterned, and he often set them in bold, almost abstract compositions.

He was the son of a grocer in Kyoto’s Nishiki market and inherited the family shop at 23, though he gave most of his time to painting. He studied Kano school and Chinese painting but learned mostly by close observation, reportedly keeping chickens in his garden to study them. His great series Colourful Realm of Living Beings, thirty hanging scrolls completed in the 1760s, is a designated National Treasure of Japan.

In works such as Cocks under Palms and Parrot on Tree, look for the fine patterning of feathers against plain grounds.