Embedded Files
Among Kim Hong-do's later works, paintings based on Chinese historical anecdotes and classical verse are extraordinarily numerous. The immortal figures he had delighted in depicting during his earlier career also frequently appear as constituent elements within compositions of this narrative type. The figure holding a banana-leaf fan (p'ajosŏn) seen in the present work would appear to be a character drawn from a specific literary or historical anecdote, while the young attendant half-concealed behind him and playing a flute is a motif commonly encountered in paintings of immortals. The work was in all likelihood originally part of a larger composition, of which only a single section now survives. Even so, the characteristic flavor of the soft, unhurried brushwork of Kim Hong-do's later manner comes through with full vitality. The quality of disconnection between individual brushstrokes, and the sense of something deliberately unrefined, are equally characteristic features of his work from the latter part of his fifties onward. Yet it is precisely this quality that lends the painting its air of serene detachment from the concerns of the mundane world.
Google Sites
Report abuse