Party of falconers near river

Two sheets (right and center) of an oban triptych showing a party of falconers gathered near a river, a subject that connects Toyohiro's printmaking to the samurai sport of takagari (falconry). Falconry was an aristocratic and warrior pursuit, hedged about with sumptuary regulations during the Edo period, but it was also a frequent subject of popular prints, where the bright costumes of the falconers and their attendants offered designers a wealth of decorative incident. Toyohiro's composition, dated by the Art Institute of Chicago to circa 1798-1801, deploys figures and birds across a horizontal landscape with a confidence that anticipates his later landscape work. The setting near a river also signals the transition in his practice from purely figural design toward the integration of landscape and figure that would distinguish his Eight Views series.