Monkeys

Monkeys is a hanging scroll in ink and light color on silk by Mori Sosen (森狙仙, 1747-1821), held in the Cleveland Museum of Art (accession 1990.129). The museum dates the work to 1820-1821, the final months of Sosen's life — placing it at the very end of his long career as the leading Mori-school animal painter of Osaka. The painting itself measures 34.2 by 45.2 cm, mounted to a full hanging height of approximately 115 cm. By the time he made this scroll Sosen had been painting monkeys for half a century, and in about 1808 he had formally changed the first character of his name to 狙, the character meaning 'monkey,' fusing his identity with his subject. The late work shows the economy of long practice: a small group of macaques rendered in restrained ink and minimal color, the weight and posture of each animal carried by a few decisive brushstrokes. The Cleveland scroll exemplifies the observational naturalism that the Maruyama-Shijō tradition brought to Edo-period animal painting and that Sosen's Osaka studio transmitted to his son Mori Tetsuzan and the next generation of the Mori school.