Peacock

Peacock (孔雀図, Kujaku-zu) is a folding-screen painting by Konoshima Ōkoku depicting a peacock displayed in full plumage. The peacock had been a standard subject of East Asian decorative painting since the Tang dynasty and remained one of the most prestigious bird subjects for Meiji and Taishō nihonga painters, prized for the colorist's challenge of rendering the tail feathers and for the symbolic associations of beauty and dignity that surrounded the bird in both Buddhist and secular iconography. Ōkoku approaches the subject with the close anatomical observation he had absorbed under his teacher Imao Keinen, combined with the graduated washes and careful negative-space placement of the Maruyama-Shijō tradition. The painting belongs to the strand of his career devoted to birds — alongside his famous eagle and falcon compositions — and demonstrates his ability to apply the careful naturalism of his kachō-e training to the formal painting format of the folding screen rather than to the smaller hanging scrolls and printed albums of his teacher's generation. The work survives in the public domain through Japanese copyright law and is widely reproduced.