Chŏng Sŏn's paintings of flowers, birds, and animals are not widely known, and those that have been brought to attention have been characterized in general terms as works following the painting-manual manner. This work, however, is striking for the exceptional originality and wit of its subject and composition, revealing a quite different dimension of his approach to the genre. It is an unprecedented and refreshingly inventive work: a painting that captures the precise instant at which a hedgehog passing through a cucumber patch is struck by a falling cucumber.

Working in swift, fluid strokes of dilute ink, Chŏng Sŏn renders the tendrils and leaves of the cucumber vine with such explosive energy that they seem to leap off the surface of the paper, magnifying to the fullest the sense of a fleeting, unrepeatable instant. The hedgehog appears to have disturbed the vine in the course of making its way through the patch, and the expression of startled bewilderment on the face of the creature — struck full on by a cucumber as large as its own body — is captured with remarkable immediacy and humor. The rigid, bristling coat of the hedgehog is rendered with convincing naturalism through the repeated application of the brush in short, sharp strokes.

As this work demonstrates, Chŏng Sŏn appears to have valued the same direct, observational approach to painting from life in the genre of animal painting as he brought to his landscapes of actual Korean scenery; and the picture surface of this work overflows with vitality and a sense of arrested movement.