Rooster, Hen, and Chicks

Nagasawa Rosetsu 長澤蘆雪

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The rooster, representative of the patriarchal head of the family—per the Confucian ideal—was a popular subject in Chinese and Japanese painting of the premodern era. Here, the birds are silhouetted in negative white against a background of gray ink wash. Together with Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) and Soga Shōhaku (1730–1781), Rosetsu was known as one of the “Three Eccentrics” (san kijin) of eighteenth-century Kyoto. He studied with Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), founder of Kyoto’s Maruyama school.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art