Gibbons playing in oak trees, one of a pair

This painting (1991.62.1) belongs to a pair of hanging scrolls, which were previously mounted on sliding door panels (fusuma) The faint circular traces at the edge of each work reveal that they were once fitted with metal door pulls. This hanging scroll and its companion piece (1991.62.2) were likely part of a larger set of twelve or sixteen panel paintings that graced three or four walls of a room in the grand residence of a daimyo lord or in a temple. Two other panel paintings to the right of these would have completed the decor of one wall. The two scrolls in our collection are the only surviving examples of what must have been a significant set of mid-Edo period sliding door paintings.

Though often referred to as “monkeys,” the gibbons depicted here are in fact a kind of ape with long arms and legs and no tails. They are not native to Japan, so Japanese artists must have based their representations on imported images by Chinese painters such as Muqi (active late 1200s), which were owned by Zen temples. Both apes and monkeys had positive associations that made them popular painting subjects for the decoration of samurai mansions and castles.

Each painting depicts two animals hanging from a large oak tree extending from left to right across both works. Here, a white gibbon grasps onto the arm of her young.