Only few examples of the subject matter of geese are known by Soga Shohaku. Two geese are included on Shohaku’s folding screen Birds, Beasts and Figures at the Sairenji temple, one is shown on the hanging scroll Hotei and Goose in the Reeds in the collection of Chodenji temple  (both Mie Prefecture), and another one on a scroll, Goose in the Reeds, included in the catalog of the Soga Shohaku Exhibition held in 1987 at the Mie Prefectural Museum of Art (cat. no. 56). All these examples show an abbreviated brushwork, complicating direct comparison. Still, the way the head of the bird is painted in Goose in the Reeds closely resembles the present work, especially in that Shohaku in both cases painted the eyes as two black circles as if seen from above, while rendering the beak as if seen from the side. If the emphasis were on anatomical correctness, this may seem unsatisfactory, but since Shohaku is known to have taken similar liberties in depicting other animals or human figures, we must assume the mismatch is intentional.

To line up two black circles for the eyes is a technique that Shohaku also used for the depiction of five sparrows on the right screen of Scenes with Falcons (cf. Kyoto National Museum, Soga Shohaku Exhibition, 2005, cat. no. 27) and for the cranes and descending geese shown in the pair of folding screens Waves and Cranes (Clark Collection). Likewise, the armadillo-like creature that is peeking at the peaches of the Queen Mother of the West on the left screen of Chinese Immortals (Kyoto National Museum) is shown with its eyes from above and the beak from the side. The approach is once more used for human figures, namely for the face of Hotei in the abovementioned Hotei and Goose in the Reeds at Chodenji temple, and again, the face of Hotei on the pair of folding screens Jurojin and Hotei (Kyoto National Museum 2005, cat. no. 82). On the left screen of Playing Chinese Children at the Kyushu National Museum, the child holding the eel is shown in a similar way. Both that child and the Hotei are looking upwards, a pose that is common for Shohaku’s figures. The goose in the present work is not exactly gazing upward, but its head is raised upwards in a manner consistent with the painter’s usual style.

The plumage of the goose is painted in a less idiosyncratic manner. Indeed, it follows rather orthodox conventions of depicting birds in ink. This may appear out of character if we adhere to the idea that Shohaku’s work is characterized by eccentricity (kiso). But Shohaku was a more multi-faceted painter than is often assumed, and not all his works qualify as “eccentric.”

The painter Shirai Kayo in his treatise Gajo yoryaku (Important Points on Painting, 1831) admits that there was “a certain daringness in his eccentricity,” but although Shohaku might have had some followers, his art was most often dismissed as “weak and inferior.” Kayo concludes that if had Shohaku adapted his direction and painted in a bit more “serene” manner, he would have been regarded as “on par with the great masters of the past.” It seems indeed that Shohaku’s style became a bit more serene in his latter years. Among his final works, there are various landscapes which justify the notion that the painter attempted a more traditional approach. The present hanging scroll may as well have derived from such context.

Soga Shohaku (painter; 1730–1781)
Born into a merchant family of Kyoto, Shohaku became a painter in his twenties, studying under the Kano school master Takada Keiho. Stylistically versatile, he painterly range spans works in full color and monochrome ink, often centering on unconventional subject matter or compositions and dynamic brushwork. Shohaku quickly achieved a reputation as an eccentric, likely fostered by his claims of successorship to the Muromachi-period Soga school and his erratic behavior towards his contemporaries.