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Kim Hong-do's courtesy name was Sanŭng (士能), and he employed a number of sobriquet throughout his life, among them Tanwon (檀園), Tan'gu (丹邱), Sŏho (西湖), Komyŏn Kŏsa (高眠居士), Chwihwasa (醉畵士), and Ch'ŏpch'wi Ong (輒醉翁). As the preeminent professional painter attached to the royal Bureau of Painting in the late Chosŏn period, his commanding mastery across every domain of pictorial art — landscape, figure, flower-and-bird, and animal painting — is a matter of wide recognition. The substantial body of surviving work he left behind affords an unusually rich foundation for scholarly examination, setting him apart from most of his contemporaries. In considering his landscape paintings specifically, however, a notable difficulty presents itself: the works currently known are concentrated almost entirely in the later phase of his career, leaving the character of his earlier landscape style a matter of considerable interest and uncertainty. Fortunately, a significant number of early landscapes survive as painted backgrounds within his genre scenes and narrative figure paintings, and these reveal that he synthesized the academic wŏnch'e (院體) manner of the Bureau of Painting, the Southern School idiom of his day, and the styles transmitted through various painting manuals and the work of his predecessors into a refined and eclectic personal synthesis.
The present work may be broadly characterized as representative of this earlier style. The evidence is clear: the mountain forms are rendered with an abundance of fine brushlines and moss-dot texture strokes (t'aejeom); the rough, bold lotus-leaf texture strokes (hayŏpjun) that would become a hallmark of the later manner are entirely absent; and the rocks along the stream and the pine trees retain a generally descriptive, detail-conscious quality of execution. The distinctive clustering of branches toward the tips of major limbs, and the treatment of the mixed deciduous trees visible at the center of the composition, likewise bear the unmistakable imprint of Kim Hong-do's personal manner. The subject of the painting is a traveler who, journeying with a young attendant, has paused by a mountain stream to rest, cooling his feet in the flowing water — a scene of leisured ease enjoyed within the embrace of beautiful natural scenery. The theme of unhurried repose is further reinforced by the figure of an ox lying languidly on the opposite bank. A slight trace of subsequent retouching is discernible in the rock to the right of the traveler.
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