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Cranes - Early Edo

( Left Screen of Pair )

	Object Type	17th Century Japanese Screen Six Panel
	Artist	Unknown
	Period	Edo
	Materials	Gold Leaf and Color on Paper Screen
	Creation Date	CA. 1650
	Dimensions	147 cm. x 354 cm. (57 7/8 in. x 139 3/8 in.)

Commentary

These works are a perfect example of screen composition. Each panel is composed with complete balance, and every two panels formed by the backward bend of the hinges forms an even more satisfactory composition. By creating this complex design, the artist has made the cracks formed by the folds an integral part of the painting instead of a detriment. This painting depicts a flock of manazuru cranes and tanchozuru cranes, which hunt for food and call for each other at the water front of a pond, covered with wild-gingers and reeds. This type of theme was popular around the early to the middle part of the Edo period, and favored especially by the Maruyama-Shijo school. This screen was painted much before the Maruyama school became active; it is probably around the end of the Kan'ei to the Kanbun period (about the mid- seventeenth century). The painting is not in an especially good condition, but the excellent composition makes up for the deficiency. The depiction of big cranes is so vivid and powerful that one has an illusion of hearing a sound of cranes crying or flapping their wings. This quality of vividness and use of thick pigments are lacking in the painting of cranes by the Maruyama-Shijo school. The artist is unknown, but it is probably the Kano school-trained, talented merchant artist. The errors in depicting tanchozuru and manazuru (some manazuru are painted with characteristics of tancho) indicate the artist to be from the merchant class. (Tsuji)