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Lot Essay
These screens have come to light after a long period of obscurity. Scholars have known of them, but not where they were. In the art journal Kokka (no. 1399, 2012), Inabata Rumiko mentions them as “missing” in her discussion of Chokuan hawk screens bearing the rare rectangular seal Kagawa present here; she lists eleven Chokuan works with this seal. Images of the screens are preserved in black and white as individual paintings in the archives of Tobunken, the Tokyo National Research Institute for Cultural Properties, which gives the provenance of Matsui Nobuyoshi; when the photographs were taken is unknown (Tobunken archive nos. 21079–90 and 21167 [seals], accessible online).
The calligraphy on each panel is by Itto Shoteki (also written Ichito Joteki with variant life dates 1539-1612), a Rinzai Zen master who led an austere life in the countryside near Nansoji Temple, a branch temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto, located in the Kai region (modern Sakai City, Yamanashi Prefecture). His most famous student was the monk Takuan Soho (1573–1645), who received his Dharma transfer (inka) from Shoteki in 1604. A painting inscribed and sealed by the monk Itto Shoteki on a portrait of Linji Yixuan (d. 886), the 11th patriarch of the Chan (Zen) Linji (Rinzai) sect, is in the Freer Gallery of Art (F1905.269).
Like the calligrapher Itto Shoteki, the artist Soga Chokuan lived in the Sakai district, south of present-day Osaka. His paintings of birds of prey catered to the warrior elite, who saw the bird imagery as a symbol of military prowess. Even in their formal poses, the artist gives the birds the sense of pent-up energy that obviously attracted him. Chokuan, and his follower Chokuan II (Nichokuan; act. early to mid-17th century), claimed to descend from the fifteenth-century painter Soga Jasoku, a bit of varnishing disputed today in the limited history known about them. Chokuan II continued in the specialty of his mentor (some say father) and there is a pair of screens of hawks and plum trees that is inscribed by Takuan Soho, the pupil of Itto Shoteki, the calligrapher here (see Yoshiaki Shimizu, ed., Japan: The Shaping of the Daimyo Culture 1185–1868 [Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1988], pl. 129). For a single Chokuan painting of a tethered hawk, see Kitagawa Hiroshi, ed., Tenchijin: Naoe Kanetsugu to sono jidai NHK taiga dorama tokubetsuten / “Tenchinjin”: The Life and Times of Naoe Kanetsugu, Introducing the Background of NHK’s Taiga Drama (Tokyo: Suntory Museum, 2009, pl. 161 (“Tenchinjin” was a 2009 drama about the warrior/aesthete Naoe Kanetsugu [1560–1619] broadcast by NHK of the novel of the same name by Masashi Hisaka). See also, Nara Prefectural Museum of Art, Soga Chokuan Nichokuan no kaisha / Paintings of Soga Chokuan and Nichokuan (1989).
The calligraphy on each panel is by Itto Shoteki (also written Ichito Joteki with variant life dates 1539-1612), a Rinzai Zen master who led an austere life in the countryside near Nansoji Temple, a branch temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto, located in the Kai region (modern Sakai City, Yamanashi Prefecture). His most famous student was the monk Takuan Soho (1573–1645), who received his Dharma transfer (inka) from Shoteki in 1604. A painting inscribed and sealed by the monk Itto Shoteki on a portrait of Linji Yixuan (d. 886), the 11th patriarch of the Chan (Zen) Linji (Rinzai) sect, is in the Freer Gallery of Art (F1905.269).
Like the calligrapher Itto Shoteki, the artist Soga Chokuan lived in the Sakai district, south of present-day Osaka. His paintings of birds of prey catered to the warrior elite, who saw the bird imagery as a symbol of military prowess. Even in their formal poses, the artist gives the birds the sense of pent-up energy that obviously attracted him. Chokuan, and his follower Chokuan II (Nichokuan; act. early to mid-17th century), claimed to descend from the fifteenth-century painter Soga Jasoku, a bit of varnishing disputed today in the limited history known about them. Chokuan II continued in the specialty of his mentor (some say father) and there is a pair of screens of hawks and plum trees that is inscribed by Takuan Soho, the pupil of Itto Shoteki, the calligrapher here (see Yoshiaki Shimizu, ed., Japan: The Shaping of the Daimyo Culture 1185–1868 [Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1988], pl. 129). For a single Chokuan painting of a tethered hawk, see Kitagawa Hiroshi, ed., Tenchijin: Naoe Kanetsugu to sono jidai NHK taiga dorama tokubetsuten / “Tenchinjin”: The Life and Times of Naoe Kanetsugu, Introducing the Background of NHK’s Taiga Drama (Tokyo: Suntory Museum, 2009, pl. 161 (“Tenchinjin” was a 2009 drama about the warrior/aesthete Naoe Kanetsugu [1560–1619] broadcast by NHK of the novel of the same name by Masashi Hisaka). See also, Nara Prefectural Museum of Art, Soga Chokuan Nichokuan no kaisha / Paintings of Soga Chokuan and Nichokuan (1989).