Manpokdong Valley 

Jeong Seon, Joseon Period 17th Century (1676~1759)

Manp'oktong depicts Manp'ok Valley, one of the celebrated scenic sites within the inner Diamond Mountains. At the point where the stream descending from Wŏnt'ong Valley to the left converges with the Manch'ŏn stream, a mountain ridge flanked on either side by the two watercourses rises abruptly into sheer cliff faces, forming Kŭmgang Terrace. The great rock face that surges prominently at the lower center of the composition is Kŭmgang Terrace itself, while the broad expanse below, where figures stand gathered, appears to be the famous flat rock platform at the base of the terrace — a formation stretching some two hundred meters in length. Above Kŭmgang Terrace, Sohyangnobong and Taehyangnobong rise in succession, and across the stream, perched against the face of the cliff above the valley, the hermitage of Podŏk-am is visible. Throughout the intervening spaces of the gorge, the celebrated peaks of the Diamond Mountains rise in dense and tightly clustered profusion.

Manp'ok Valley was regarded as the most scenically magnificent gorge within the Diamond Mountains, and Chŏng Sŏn returned to it as a subject on multiple occasions. As in his paintings of the Complete View of the Diamond Mountains type, the present work generates a dazzling pictorial tension through the interplay of contrasting elements: the gently swelling, rounded forms of Hyangnobong rendered in loose, hemp-fiber–like texture strokes, set in vivid counterpoint against the sharply vertical peaks depicted in upright, forceful brushwork, and the lustrous ink and deftly accomplished T-shaped pine trees that complete the composition with consummate authority. The work is inscribed "Manp'oktong, Kyŏmjae" (萬瀑洞 謙齋), and bears two small vermilion square seals reading Wŏn (元) and Paek (伯).