Baekcheondong Valley 

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

Paekch'ŏndong depicts the scenic landscape of the Diamond Mountains. Paekch'ŏn Valley was a resting point where travellers, having completed their tour of the Inner Diamond Mountains, would pause on their way toward the Outer Diamond Mountains to rest and take in the surrounding scenery. Chŏng Sŏn produced several paintings of this subject, and they characteristically feature a stream enveloped in dense vegetation alongside the rocks that line its banks, together with poets and men of letters absorbed in appreciating the scene, attended by their various servants and palanquin bearers.

Unlike other valleys within the Diamond Mountains, this site is marked by an absence of towering peaks or dramatic rock faces; it is rendered instead as a quiet, unassuming scene along a gentle stream. The fir trees, evoked through side-brush rice-dot strokes in dense, lustrous ink, and the wisps of mist and haze distributed throughout the composition, combine with the flowing water to heighten the lyrical, poetic atmosphere of the scene. The S-shaped rendering of the water's surface — executed in thin, swift strokes of dilute ink — is equally distinctive as a personal mannerism of Chŏng Sŏn's pictorial vocabulary. The work is inscribed Kyŏmjae (謙齋), below which two small white-text square seals are impressed, though their content resists legible decipherment.