Two Pheasant and Peonies

Two Pheasants and Peonies is a Katsushika Hokusai design in the kachō-e, or bird-and-flower, tradition that the artist developed alongside his more famous landscapes. A pair of pheasants is set against a flowering peony bush, their long tails curving across the composition and their feathers worked in carefully differentiated patterns of brown, black, and green. The peonies bloom in soft pinks and whites and provide a counterweight of mass against the angular line of the birds. Hokusai's handling shows the same observational intensity he brought to the Hokusai manga while organizing the design with the refinement of a finished ukiyo-e print: each leaf and tail feather is purposeful, and negative space is left to breathe at the edges. Within Edo ukiyo-e, bird-and-flower designs played an important role in the diffusion of Chinese painting motifs into a broader popular audience, and Hokusai's contribution helped raise the standard of the format. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves this design in a strong state and contributes to an understanding of how Hokusai expanded his range beyond Mount Fuji to engage seriously with the natural-history strand of Japanese print culture.