Eagle and Monkey

This hand-colored [hosoban](/glossary/hosoban) urushi-e in the Art Institute of Chicago depicts an eagle and a monkey, a paired subject with roots in Chinese painting where it carried associations of strength, vigilance, and the natural hierarchy of predator and prey. The motif had a long history in East Asian art before reaching [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), and Shigenaga's treatment in the narrow vertical hosoban format stacks the eagle above and the monkey below, exploiting the format's verticality to create the sense of an aerial predator looking down on its quarry. Urushi-e technique adds lacquered ink to the eagle's dark plumage and the monkey's fur, supplemented by hand-applied beni and other pigments in the costume of the perch or branch elements. Shigenaga's [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) subjects, of which this print and the Bamboo and Tiger and Mandarin Ducks are typical, demonstrate that mid-Edo ukiyo-e was not exclusively a genre of beauties and actors but extended into the literary and Confucian iconography that Edo print buyers shared with continental tradition. The Chicago impression is in good state and shows the dramatic compositional possibilities Shigenaga drew from the hosoban scale.