Landscape with gibbons and cranes

About this artwork

Depicting, in the "blue and green style," two cranes, and a total of eighteen gibbons (black, white, gray and brown). Among the gibbons are a mother and her children. They are distributed in a wooded landscape, with pine trees, flowering trees, and pink bamboo, and with a stream running through it and two waterfalls. Some of the gibbons are climbing pine trees, picking berries, catching fleas, and forming a chain from a branch to catch a crab. Forged signature, two seals.

Art Historical Context

This enchanting landscape, created in the 18th century during China’s Qing dynasty, showcases the enduring appeal of the “blue-and-green” style long associated with the Ming master Qiu Ying. Although once attributed to him, the painting bears a forged signature, revealing it as a later work that pays homage to earlier traditions. Gifted to the Smithsonian by collector Charles Lang Freer, it reflects the Qing period’s fascination with reviving and reinterpreting classical Chinese painting techniques and subjects. The scene brims with lively detail: eighteen gibbons in shades of black, white, g...