Bird (Album of Sketches by Katsushika Hokusai and His Disciples) - Katsushika Hokusai (19th century)

Katsushika Hokusai

Ink and color on paper

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This drawing of roosters is a leaf from the Album of Sketches by Katsushika Hokusai and His Disciples, a remarkable collection of ninety-seven leaves executed in ink and color on paper, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The composition depicts a confrontation between a real rooster and a carved wooden one, illustrating an episode from the popular novel The Tale of the Craftsman of Hida (1809), in which a master carpenter named Suminawa creates a bird so lifelike that a living rooster mistakes it for a rival. The sheet is considered a preparatory drawing — a hanshita-e — made as the basis for a woodblock-printed illustration, exemplifying Hokusai's role as one of the most prolific and versatile ukiyo-e artists of the Edo period. Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was instrumental in broadening ukiyo-e beyond portraiture into landscape, nature, and narrative illustration, producing thousands of prints, paintings, and illustrated books over his seven-decade career.