Five Sparrows on Bamboo

Here, a Japanese artist shows a family of sparrows on a corkscrewing shoot of bamboo. Four chicks are huddled near the ground, while their mother watches over them from above. The birds are all painted without any outlines; instead, their bodies are described using areas of diluted ink-wash on top of which small brushstrokes indicate the birds’ eyes, beaks, feathers, etc. This technique, known in China and Japan as “boneless” (i.e., without contour lines), was associated in Japan with Muqi, whose works helped introduced this technique to Japan.