Among Chang Sŭng-ŏp's works, there are those that — despite being rendered in relatively spare, dilute ink alone — convey a quality of desolation and stillness of unusual intensity. The folding screen formerly in the collection of Yukdang Ch'oe Nam-sŏn (六堂 崔南善) and the present pair of hanging scrolls are among the most notable examples.

In the eagle that stands erect in solitary defiance atop a fantastically formed scholar's rock rising above surging waves — grasping the stone with a single talon and casting its sharp gaze across the surrounding expanse — and in the eyes of the deer that stands uncertainly beneath a strangely contorted branch and meets the viewer's gaze directly, there is a depth that resists easy verbal articulation. Chang Sŭng-ŏp was particularly drawn to the subject of an eagle perched upon a scholar's rock — a compositional formula that had been in use since the mid-Chosŏn painter Chŏng Hong-nae (鄭弘來) — yet Chang characteristically exaggerated the fantastical forms of the rocks to an extreme degree and frequently depicted the eagle poised on a single leg. The solitary, eerily shaped rock rising from heaving waves, and the eagle standing upon it with an air of fierce, unbroken spirit, read almost as a self-portrait of an artist bearing witness to the declining fortunes of a nation in its final hour. And in the deer that holds our gaze, and in the finger-like branches that hang suspended above it, one senses a concentrated inward intensity closely akin to that of the Qing dynasty master Bada Shanren (八大山人) — an emotion too tightly coiled for easy release.