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Lot Essay
Bamboo, pine and plum are auspicious emblems of the New Year, while paired cranes and mandarin ducks, as well as the countless other paired birds seen here—egrets, geese, pheasants among others—suggest this festive, sumptuous work in polychrome and gold might have been a wedding commission. The feathered flock conveys a joyous cacophony dear to the hearts of bird watchers.
Cranes mate for life and thus symbolize happy marriage and blissful family life, which is why they were more commonly represented on wedding garments and dowry objects than any other animal motif. Shown here are a pair of familiar Manchurian cranes (Grus japonensis), which have tall, stately, white-feathered bodies with a crest of red feathers. The family theme is strengthened by the charming detail of a nest with baby chicks in the hollow knot of the pine tree; the chicks open their beaks to receive delivery of a tasty worm.
Ishida Yutei’s work is rare. Screens by this artist featuring a multitude of cranes are in the John C. Weber Collection, New York, and the Mary Griggs Burke Collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2015.79.73.1, 2). A third pair of screens, in the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, includes forty-six cranes. Yutei was a Kyoto artist who trained in the traditional Kano school methods with Tsuruzawa Tangei (1688–1769). Here, he draws on the monumentality and stylization associated with Kano painting—the massive pine tree—but his interest in naturalism presages the work of his foremost student, Maruyama Okyo (1733–1795), the famous and influential champion of Western-influenced naturalism in Japan during the 18th century.
Yutei received commissions from the imperial court and around the year 1767 was awarded the honorary title of Bridge of the Law (hokkyo), as seen in the signature on these screens.
Cranes mate for life and thus symbolize happy marriage and blissful family life, which is why they were more commonly represented on wedding garments and dowry objects than any other animal motif. Shown here are a pair of familiar Manchurian cranes (Grus japonensis), which have tall, stately, white-feathered bodies with a crest of red feathers. The family theme is strengthened by the charming detail of a nest with baby chicks in the hollow knot of the pine tree; the chicks open their beaks to receive delivery of a tasty worm.
Ishida Yutei’s work is rare. Screens by this artist featuring a multitude of cranes are in the John C. Weber Collection, New York, and the Mary Griggs Burke Collection in the Minneapolis Institute of Art (2015.79.73.1, 2). A third pair of screens, in the Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, includes forty-six cranes. Yutei was a Kyoto artist who trained in the traditional Kano school methods with Tsuruzawa Tangei (1688–1769). Here, he draws on the monumentality and stylization associated with Kano painting—the massive pine tree—but his interest in naturalism presages the work of his foremost student, Maruyama Okyo (1733–1795), the famous and influential champion of Western-influenced naturalism in Japan during the 18th century.
Yutei received commissions from the imperial court and around the year 1767 was awarded the honorary title of Bridge of the Law (hokkyo), as seen in the signature on these screens.