Minobiki Cockerel

Provenance

Everard Read, Johannesburg.

Private Collection.

Notes

Neil Rodger was an artist who pursued timelessness over fashion. Through his work he sought to depict a universality and harmony that bridges the approaches of the great Dutch masters with the contemporary era, remaining unmoved by revolutions, fashions, or attitudes throughout his career.¹

Among the artist’s most recognisable subjects are ornamental roosters, Hamburg, Yokohama, and Minohiki breeds chosen not for their barnyard familiarity, but for their poise and grandeur. These are not casual observations of farmyard life. Rodger’s roosters are frontal, composed, and monumental, treated with the same unflinching attention he brought to portraiture and the nude. Notable examples include Yokohama Rooster III (2010), with its similarly architectural plumage, and Young Woman with Yokohama Cockerel II (2013), which combines his masterful depiction of both figure and bird.

The present lot features the Minobiki cockerel, also known as the Minohiki, a Japanese ornamental breed revered for its almost sculptural, architectural presence. The Minobiki is among the oldest of Japan's long-tailed breeds, believed to have been established during the late Edo period, and is the direct ancestor of the Yokohama, a breed Rodger also commonly painted.² That he returned to both suggests not a casual interest but a sustained engagement with this Japanese ornamental lineage, birds bred over centuries for beauty alone.

This architectural quality would have appealed naturally to Rodger, whose training at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam immersed him in a tradition where birds were serious and legitimate subjects. The great Dutch masters understood that a subject need not be grand to be treated greatly, and so did Rodger.

^1. Everard Read (no date) Everard Read, Neil Rodger: Biography, online, accessed 26 May 2026.

^2. No author (no date) Feather Site, Monohiki, online, accessed 26 May 2026.

Yokohama Rooster III (2010) Strauss & Co, Johannesburg, 12 November 2024, lot 346, Sold R 257 950.00 (USD 15,891.78)

Young Woman with Yokohama Cockerel II (2013) Strauss & Co, 17 September 2013, lot 17, Sold R220 000 (USD 1,355.38).