Sparrows in Bamboo 省の竹 | Kishi Chikudō 岸竹堂 | 1826-1897 – Morikawa Sōbun | 1847 -1932 森川曽文 |

This picture is an interesting collaborative work. Teamwork is not uncommon in Japanese painting, but usually two or more painters are involved in the actual picture and each of them only signs the element that they have added to the picture. Here, however, the The main picture was painted by Kishi Chikudō, who was famous at the time, and it is assumed that the 20 years younger and less illustrious painter Morikawa Sōbun later (possibly only after Chikudō's death) mounted the picture in reverence for the master and painted and signed the mount. has.   

Well, the sparrow spectacle in the air by Chikudō is certainly very virtuoso - no two birds have the same shape. The group is placed diagonally in the picture, and Sōbun reacts sensitively to this. He chose bamboo as the motif, because sparrows are traditionally associated with it. At the height of the group there is a bush in the mount, and in the upper and lower areas of the mount there are further bamboo stalks that have exactly the same slanted angle as the diagonally placed group of sparrows.