Goshawk on its perch
Jack Hillier expressed his admiration for this print by Koryūsai in the 1960 Grabhorn Collection catalogue, Landscape Prints of Old Japan:
Falconry was an aristocratic sport in Japan as it was in Europe, and many great painters of the Kano school were noted for their depictions of this proud bird, symbolic, almost, of the pride and hauteur of the nobleman. Here Koryusai challenged comparison—for all the plebian medium—with the finest classical exemplars, and by counterbalancing the alert but chained ferocity of the falcon with the heaviness of the trappings of his perch, gave his print a vitality that was sometimes lacking from the work of the revered masters he rivalled.
Koryūsai was one of several artists to explore the use of bird-and-flower genre in the 1770s and 1780s. To the extent that they quoted upper-class painting traditions, bird-and-flower prints gave a gloss of cultural legitimacy to ukiyo-e, an art form whose primary audience was commoners. Another design by Koryūsai combines the falcon with Mt. Fuji and an eggplant, a trio said to bring good fortune as the subject of the first New Year’s dream.
A version of this print in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has a narrow band of clouds at the top, and may be an earlier state.
