Pictured here is a fan-shaped painting of a crane flying over a seascape with cresting waves. Purchased by Charles Appleton Longfellow (“Charley”) during his extended stay in Japan from 1871-1873, the painting is one of many he brought back to the family home on Brattle Street and used to decorate the ceiling of his second floor sitting room.
Cranes possess great symbolism in Japanese art and culture. Longevity, good fortune, success and authority are all traits attributed to or symbolized by cranes in Japanese. In more recent times, cranes have also come to represent peace and hope. Cranes are also an important form to the art of origami, or paper-folding. Japanese tradition holds that one who creates one thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish, happiness, or good luck by the gods.
In the fall of 1874 after Charley’s return from Asia, he decorated his sitting room with the many objects he acquired during his twenty-month sojourn. The room became so associated with the things Charley brought home from Japan that, after his death in 1893, it became known as the “Japanese Room”. Prominent among the decorations were more than thirty fan paintings placed on the room’s ceiling, and on one door. In doing so, Charley may have been copying a decorative scheme he saw used in Japan, although this is unclear. Made of carefully applied paint, ink and in some cases gold, the paintings are meant to look like actual hand fans and depict scenes of daily life, nature, or from myth and legend. Cranes are prominent on many of the items from Charley’s Japanese collection, including metalwork, ceramics, textiles, and these fan paintings.
After over a century of being exposed to soot from the home’s historic heating systems and gas lighting, damage caused by insects, and general wear-and-tear the paintings were removed from the ceiling of Charley’s sitting room and sent to a lab for conservation. After being cleaned, repaired, and properly housed they are now in good condition to be studied, and perhaps one day reproduced as part of a project to refurnish Charley’s “Japan Room”.