Autumn Trees and a Thatched Cottage

Kim Ung-hwan, Joseon Period 18th Century (1742~1789)

Kim Ŭng-hwan's courtesy name was Yŏngsu (永受) and his sobriquet Pokhŏn (復軒) or Tamjoldang (擔拙堂). He served in the posts of Pyŏlje of the Office of the Royal Wardrobe (尚衣院) and Ch'albang of Soch'on. Kim Ŭng-hwan was a member of the Kaesŏng Kim clan, which produced sixteen painters across the period from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century; he was the founding figure who established the lineage that allowed the Kaesŏng Kim family to perpetuate itself as a preeminent painter's household from the late through the final phase of the Chosŏn dynasty. As is well known, his younger brother Ŭng-ri (應履), the following generation of Tŭk-sin (得臣), Sŏk-sin (碩臣), and Yang-sin (良臣), and the generation after them, Kŏn-jong (建鍾) and Hwa-jong (和鍾), were all of the Kaesŏng Kim clan; and these figures formed bonds of affinity through marriage with other major painter families, notably the Indong Chang clan (仁同張氏) and the Kaesŏng Yi clan (開城李氏). Given that such networks of personal connection served as a critical foundation for appointment to major commissions and for advancement within the professional painter establishment, and that they shaped the transmission of pictorial learning as well, the lineage of Kim Ŭng-hwan is of exceptional importance for the study of painter households and their associated styles in the period from the late eighteenth century onward. Kim Ŭng-hwan left behind paintings in the Southern School mode in a painting-manual–derived manner, landscape paintings centered on the ink-splashing technique (p'almokpŏp) in the tradition of Mi-style landscape, and landscapes of actual scenery in which ink technique and delicate color washes are more prominent than brushwork per se.

The subject of this painting is an autumn scene in which a scholar accompanied by a young attendant makes his way toward a thatched riverside retreat. The composition presents a variant of the Ni Zan–derived structural formula, built from three trees, rocks rendered in Ni Zan's characteristic broken-belt texture strokes (chŏltaejun), a distant mountain reduced to a simple, rounded silhouette with a village at its foot, and the expanse of water that divides the two spatial zones. The full range of canonical Southern School subjects and techniques is employed throughout: a grouping of trees in the painting-manual manner combining bare deciduous limbs with evergreen foliage, a broad flat rock, a vacant thatched pavilion enclosed in bamboo, a figure crossing a bridge, and rocks and hillocks enlivened with pepper-dot clusters. The limpid handling of blue color washes and the transparent rendering of the mountains — entirely free of texture strokes — harmonize with particular felicity with the mood of a cool autumn day. The work is understood to be an early piece from the period when Kim Ŭng-hwan was still absorbing the Southern School manner, prior to the formation of his mature personal style.

At the top of the composition appears the following colophon by Ch'ojŏng Pak Che-ga (楚亭 朴齊家, 1750–?): "Sobered from wine, I take my staff and leave the village; the sandbar stretches on and on, and the water shines blue. Who has asked for the hidden principles of the Southern School? A few branches of autumn trees, and a single thatched pavilion. (村邊杖策酒初醒 沙嘴綿野水青 誰問南宗傳妙訣 數柯秋樹一茅亭)"