page_title: Itō Jakuchū
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Itō Jakuchū / Works
caption_attribution_description: English: Ito Jakuchu's "White Phoenix on Old Pine from the Colourful Realm of Living Beings" (Edo Period).
context_page_description: Itō Jakuchū was a Japanese painter of the mid-Edo period when Japan had closed its doors to the outside world. Many of his paintings concern traditionally Japanese subjects, particularly chickens and other birds. Many of his otherwise traditional works display a great degree of experimentation with perspective, and with other very modern stylistic elements.
  Compared to Soga Shōhaku and other exemplars of the mid-Edo period eccentric painters, Jakuchū is said to have been very calm, restrained, and professional. He held strong ties to Zen Buddhist ideals, and was considered a lay brother; but he was also keenly aware of his role within a Kyoto society that was becoming increasingly commercial.
context_section_description: A very common theme among his work is birds, in particular hens and roosters, though several of his more famous paintings depict cockatoos, parrots, and phoenixes.
  One of his most ambitious endeavors, and therefore most famous works, is known as the "Pictures of the Colorful Realm of Living Beings" (動植綵絵, Dōshoku sai-e). Begun around 1757 and not finished until 1765, the Pictures are a set of twenty-seven hanging scrolls created as a personal offering to the Shōkoku-ji temple. They depict a number of animal subjects in monumental scale and with an according degree of detail. Today, Dōshoku sai-e is owned by the Museum of the Imperial Collections.
  Another of his famous pieces, dubbed "Birds and Animals in the Flower Garden" (鳥獣花木図屏風, Chōjūkaboku-zu byōbu), is arguably one of the most modern-looking pieces to come out of Japan during this period. The piece, one of a pair of sixfold screens, depicts a white elephant and a number of other animals in a garden. What makes it unique, eccentric and modern is the division of the entire piece into a grid of squares (or, in modern terms, the painting is "pixelated") roughly a centimeter on each side. Each square was colored individually, in order to create the resulting aggregate image.  Today, Chōjūkaboku-zu byōbu is owned by the Idemitsu Museum of Arts.
  Jakuchū also experimented with a number of forms of printing, most of them using woodblocks. But occasionally he would use stencils or other methods to produce different effects.
  Jakuchū's painting style is influenced by Shen Nanping (Shen Quan c. 1682–1760). His crane subjects prove this, being part of traditional Japanese legacy, but also the neutral background and the ‘cut’ given to the scene composition, with always a careful and detailed flora and fauna decorative style of painting. 
  The Jakuchū gafu (若冲画譜 ; "Album of Jakuchū) is a series of works depicting flowers. The work is always in a circle, such as can be found on ceiling paintings. The originals were poorly preserved, but a number of quality copies of the album were made during the Meiji era of the 1890s.
caption: Old Pine Tree and White Phoenix. Part of the series Dōshoku sai-e
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