Cranes

Originally large sliding-door panels, this pair of two-panel folding screens is the last of a direct line of monumental crane paintings by nineteenth-century artists who drew inspiration from screens by the celebrated Rinpa painter Ogata Kōrin. An avid admirer of Kōrin, Sakai Hōitsu knew his screens with cranes, now in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D. C., and in 1815, published them in his catalog of Kōrin’s oeuvre, One Hundred Paintings by Kōrin (Kōrin hyakuzu), bringing them to the attention of Rinpa artists of the nineteenth century. Perhaps as a further act of homage, Hōitsu made a copy of a portion of Kōrin’s original design, reversing the stance of four of his cranes and extending a flowing stream behind them on a gold two-panel folding screen, now in the Worcester Museum of Art. Kiitsu then weighed in with a copy of his own, painting an almost exact restatement of the full Kōrin work on a pair of six-panel folding screens, now in the Etsuko and Joe Price Collection in Corona del Mar, California.