Tiger, Tigress and Cub

A regal, reclining tigress nurses her cub, while an adult male tiger—possibly her mate—stands poised to drink at a narrow mountain stream, his mouth open in a snarl. Although the landscape is rendered simply in ink monochrome, the thick fur and sinuous muscularity of the tigers are painted in detail, with the color wash on their coats and the yellow silk background around them creating the impression of sunlight.

Chikudō, the fourth-generation head of the Kyoto-based Kishi school, advocated the practice of sketching from life and could have seen live tigers starting in the late 1860s. Like the founder of the school, Ganku, he became famous for his meticulous tiger paintings, one of which was exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The artist and several of his late Edo- and Meiji-period contemporaries were active in establishing a painting style that blended traditional Japanese painting with elements of Western realism and perspective.