Skip to main content
Collections Menu
SAM'S collection
Cranes at Play under Pines
Cranes at Play under Pines

Cranes at Play under Pines

Date1830
Maker Tanomura Chikuden Japanese, 1777-1835
Label TextOne of Japan's most important literati artists, Chikuden favored subjects strongly influenced by his study of contemporary Ming Chinese painting. Chikuden's skillful rendering of the crane and pine, a pervasive motif in Japanese art, has a distinctly Chinese flavor, emphasized by the narrow format and rising ground plane. The addition of the red sun, a feature not typically seen in Japanese landscape paintings, links this scene with the fabled Mount Horai, the island of immortality located off the coast of China. Home to the transcendent Immortals (who can be seen cavorting on the jade vessel also in this gallery,) Mount Horai is associated with many auspicious emblems, including the pine and the crane.
Object number74.20
Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Asian Art Museum, "Live Long and Prosper: Auspicious Motifs in East Asian Art", May 23, 2009 - February 21, 2010 Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "A Thousand Years of Beauty: Japanese Art in Seattle", July 16, 2001 - November 17, 2002 Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, "A Thousand Cranes: Treasures of Japanese Art", February 5 - July 12, 1987 (02/05/1987 - 07/12/1987)
Credit LineMargaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund
Dimensions49 9/16 x 12 3/16 in. (125.9 x 30.9 cm) Overall h.: 78 1/4 in. Overall w.: 18 1/16 in.
MediumInk and color on paper
Tanomura Chikuden
Object number: 2010.41.106
Three Friends by a  Mountain Stream
Tanomura Chokunyu
1902
Object number: 2010.41.17
Triptych:  Landscape with Two Cranes
Kano Motonobu
Object number: 58.116
Tsuji Kako
Object number: 2010.41.99.2
Two Cranes Standing
Ito Jakuchu
late 18th century
Object number: 61.180
Photo: Spike Mafford
Tan'yu^
1668
Object number: 34.112
Photo: Eduardo Calderon
Tsuji Kako
late 1910s
Object number: 2010.41.80
Photo: Elizabeth Mann
Zhang Ruitu
1627
Object number: 92.1
Song of the Cranes
William Cumming
1961
Object number: 81.89
Snuff bottle, crane under pine tree
Wang Ping-jung
late 19th century
Object number: 33.901