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Squirrel on a Pine Branch
Song Tian (Chinese, active 1300s)
1500s
- Medium
- hanging scroll, ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 119.7 x 66.4 cm (47 1/8 x 26 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- China, Ming dynasty (1368–1644)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Gift from the Collection of George Gund III
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This painting captures a squirrel in action, distracted and twisting its head while climbing and looking at a little bug to the right. The painter skillfully employs a combination of ink washes and fine brushstrokes to simulate the animal’s fur. Only three simple curved lines depict the squirrel’s claws.
The subject of squirrels did not appear in Chinese painting before the late Southern Song (1127–1279) and Yuan periods (1279–1368). The painter Songtian was one of the few Yuan painters who specialized in this theme.
