Nue

The Nue is a chimerical yokai of medieval Japanese folklore, possessing the head of a monkey, the body of a tanuki, the limbs of a tiger and a serpent for a tail. According to the Heike Monogatari it was slain by the warrior Minamoto no Yorimasa during the reign of Emperor Konoe, when the creature plagued the imperial palace with nightmares and a black cloud. Binnie's painting of this subject continues his sustained engagement with figures from classical Japanese narrative and theatre, where the Nue features in a Noh play of the same name. The composite anatomy of the creature presents particular pictorial challenges in describing fur, scale and shadow within a unified figure. Binnie's choice of paint as the medium permits the layered translucencies and dark grounds appropriate to a creature of nocturnal apparition, traditions extending back through Yoshitoshi's late-19th-century yokai imagery.