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Dragon and Tiger
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
A tiger sits in a bamboo grove whipped with fierce wind, while a dragon claws through clouds above rough waves. Tiger and dragon are Chinese cosmological symbols of the balancing forces in the world, yin (the feminine aspect) and yang (the masculine aspect). The tiger's roar is also said to generate wind, and the dragon clouds. The screens may have originally been meant to express the fluctuating nature of the world as envisioned in the practice of military divination, or forecasting, based on the Yijing ( Book of Changes ).
Cleveland Museum of Art’s own descriptionCredit lineDragon and Tiger (龍虎図屏風), c. 1546–56. Sesson Shūkei (Japanese, c. 1492–c. 1577). Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink on paper; each: 157.3 x 339 cm (61 15/16 x 133 7/16 in.); framed: 172.3 x 354 cm (67 13/16 x 139 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund, 1959.136
