The painter Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) was active in Kyoto during the mid-Edo period. While born as the eldest son of a wealthy merchant, he was not interested in fame or profit and did not like academic study, entertainment, or recreation. He just devoted himself to his sole pleasure: painting. Jakuchū lived as a playful painter until the ripe age of eighty-five, a rarity for someone in his day. To mark the 220th anniversary of his death, Okada Museum of Art will present all seven of its Jakuchū artworks at this exhibition.


It is the first time in four years that these four color paintings and three ink wash paintings, which span from his early to late years, will be on display together. They are as follows: “Flowers and Rooster,” which Jakuchū painted in his late thirties when he was studying painting and running his family's vegetable wholesale business, “Peacock and Phoenix,” from around when he was forty years old and focusing entirely on painting, “Birds and Plum Blossoms,” “Rooster in Snow,” “Rooster Standing on a Hat,” and “Crested Myna and the Moon,” which he painted his late forties, as well as “Thirty-Six Immortal Poets,” which he produced at the age of eighty-one. Visitors are invited to enjoy the colorful world of Edo period painting through these Jakuchū artworks as well as those of the Kanō school (which Jakuchū studied), Ogata Kōrin, Ogata Kenzan (Kōrin's younger brother), the leading Kyoto painter and Jakuchū contemporary Maruyama Ōkyo, the brilliant Soga Shōhaku, and others.