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Your galleryMonkey Hanging on to a Branch
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Look at the soft, feathery strokes of the monkey’s fur, then follow its raised arm to the thin branch it pulls toward its mouth.
Mori Sosen, who worked in Osaka, was celebrated for his monkeys. Early in his career he painted them from animals caught by hunters, and later he studied them in the mountains. The Cleveland Museum of Art dates this scroll 1780, when he was in his early thirties. In Japanese the word for monkey, saru, sounds like a word for going away, so monkeys were thought to drive off bad luck.
hanging scroll; color on paper · Overall: 68.6 x 25.7 cm · Cleveland Museum of Art
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Monkey Hanging on to a Branch
- Artist
- Mori Sosen (Japanese, 1747–1821)
- Date
- 1780
- Medium
- hanging scroll; color on paper
- Dimensions
- Overall: 68.6 x 25.7 cm (27 x 10 1/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. John A. Hadden
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Cleveland Museum of Art
Artist’s life 1747–1821
View in the AtlasGaller’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.