Squirrels on the Chestnut Tree (1300s): Art, History and Details

Squirrels on the Chestnut Tree (1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Ge Shuying (Chinese, active 1300s).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One squirrel perches on a branch nibbling a chestnut, while the other on ground is approaching a fallen chestnut. The painter used fine, short staccato strokes to simulate the animal’s soft fur, while the tree is depicted with broader wet strokes in a rougher manner. Ge Shuying is known for his depictions of squirrels in a monochrome style characterized by crisp, decisive brushstrokes. He may have been a Chan (Zen) priest-painter, or perhaps a Daoist painter, active in the Hangzhou region of eastern China. From there his works spread to Japan, where squirrel paintings gained the attention of Japanese collectors.

Object facts

• Title: Squirrels on the Chestnut Tree
• Date: 1300s
• Creator attribution: Ge Shuying (Chinese, active 1300s)
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Painting: 97 x 39.4 cm (38 3/16 x 15 1/2 in.); Overall with knobs: 181.6 x 58 cm (71 1/2 x 22 13/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1979.70

A detail from the museum

Dr. Ju-hsi Chou argues that Yongtian and Songtian were different, but related (father-son, master-pupil, or brothers) painters of squirrels. Ge was apparently their family name. A Tokyo National Museum squirrel painting signed Songtian Shanren (松田山人) has a seal giving the artist's formal name as Ge Shuying (葛淑英).

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Matsudaira, Yorihira 松平賴平, Munetō Tayama 田山宗堯, and Yuijirō Kamei 龜井唯二郎. Shōbi shiryō 尚美資料. Tōkyō: Shōbikai, 1917.
• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1979." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 67, no. 3 (1980): 58–99.
• Ho, Wai-kam, Sherman E. Lee, Laurence Sickman, and Marc F. Wilson. Eight Dynasties of Chinese Painting: The Collections of the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1980.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.