Autumn Mountain with Various Trees

Chon Ki, Joseon Period 19th Century (1825~1854)

Chŏn Ki was an active participant in two prominent literary gatherings of the mid-nineteenth century: the Chikhashisa (稷下詩社), founded in 1853, and the Pyŏgodangshisa (碧梧堂詩社), which continued for more than twenty years from 1847 onward — both in the company of Yu Ch'oe-jin (柳最鎭), Cho Hŭi-ryong (趙熙龍), Yu Chae-so (劉在昭), Yu Suk (劉淑), and Na Ki (羅岐). His poetry appears in the P'ungyosamsŏn (風謠三選), the collective literary anthology of the yŏhang — the non-aristocratic men of letters of the capital. As his use of the seal inscription "Scholar of the Eastern Kingdom" (東國儒生) makes plain, Chŏn Ki held a painterly philosophy rooted in the pure ideals of literati painting, the ultimate source of which lay in his connection to Kim Chŏng-hŭi (金正喜). His body of work falls broadly into two categories: landscape paintings in a reductive manner that combines parched brushwork and hemp-fiber texture strokes with spare, abbreviated compositions; and works of the Maehwa Sŏok (梅花書屋圖) type, in which meticulous brushwork is joined to a more solidly structured compositional framework.

The present painting belongs to the former category, its quiet, composed arrangement consisting of a deciduous tree reduced to bare branches, three evergreens, low-growing shrubs, and an earthen hill behind. The inscription declares that this work was painted on a winter night of the kiyu year — that is, 1849 — as an experiment in painting with a worn-down, stub-ended brush (禿筆): "Autumn Mountains with Mixed Trees; kiyú winter night; tried the stub brush (秋山雜樹 己酉冬夜 試禿豪)." The majority of his dated works are concentrated in 1849, suggesting that this period represented the height of his creative activity. The somewhat stiff and constrained quality of the brushwork is attributable to the stub brush, yet the blunt, rough character of that worn instrument is harmonized with dry ink to give eloquent expression to the desolate mood of autumn. The loosely dragged hemp-fiber strokes, casually unrestrained in their freedom, and the isolated vertical dots scattered throughout the composition are among the defining characteristics of Chŏn Ki's landscape manner. The full mastery of his idiosyncratic stub-brush technique reaches its zenith in the Kyesan P'omu-do (溪山泡茂圖) painted in the same year, whereas the present Ch'usan Chapsudo strikes a notably different note through its comparatively orderly and disciplined brushwork. In addition to the vermilion square seal reading Koram (古藍), the work bears seals reading Ich'odang (二草堂··), Kiyuso-jak (己酉所作), and Yu Cho-wŏn-in (劉照遠印).