A fine wood study of a hawk on a stand, carved in marubori and finished in a bronze coloured patination. With tomobako.
Signed Chozan (Sato Chozan 1888-1963)
Tomobako inscribed on the cover taka (hawk) and on the reverse Chozan with the seal of Seizo. 
This sculpture was exhibited in the seventeenth Inten Exhibition in Tokyo in 1930, illustrated in Sato Chozan Art Exhibition, Denchu Museum in Okayama and Hiragushi Denchu Sculpture Museum in Tokyo, 2006, p.91. 
Sato Chozan was one of the remarkably talented artists of the late Meiji up to mid-Showa period though very little of his works remained after a fire which occurred during the Second World War. He was born in Meiji 21 (1888) to a family commissioned in wood carving for the Imperial Household.  His first name was Saizo.  At the age of eighteen he became a pupil at Sato Choun, the first pupil of Takamura Koun and became an independent artist in 1913 with the artist name Chozan given by his teacher Choun.  He was given a scholarship to study in France in 1922 by Nihon Bijutsu-in (Japan Art Institute) for their twenty-fifth Anniversary.  He was inspired by the western sculptures at the Louvre and by a work of Rodin’s student Emile Antoine Bourdelle which encouraged him to visit the artist despite his inability to converse in French.  However he was accepted to work in Bourdelle’s studio and stayed until 1924. Following a disagreement with his teacher in 1939, he decided to sign his artist name Seizo instead of Chozan and finally he used his art name Gengen around 1948.  He died in 1963 at the age of seventy five. 

木彫鷹置物　銘　朝山（佐藤朝山）