Rooster (c. 1620): Art, History and Details

Rooster (c. 1620) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This bird, with its fierce expression, sharp beak, and spurred feet, may have been a champion in the cockfighting ring. The Mughal emperor Jahangir requested that his royal court artists paint portraits of remarkable birds and animals with as much realism as possible. He felt that such paintings enhanced feelings of amazement beyond hearing or reading an account.

Object facts

• Title: Rooster
• Date: c. 1620
• Culture: India, Mughal, 17th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Image: 18.3 x 12.1 cm (7 3/16 x 4 3/4 in.); Overall: 37.3 x 25.4 cm (14 11/16 x 10 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1944.501

A detail from the museum

This page belonged to the owner of Cleveland’s Leisy Brewing Company, est. 1873.

Collection credit

Gift of Herbert F. Leisy

Further reading listed by the museum

• Islamic Art: Selected Examples from the Loan Exhibition of Islamic Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944.
• Hollis, Howard. “An Imperial Rooster.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 32, no. 9 (November 1945): 171–173.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.