Heron Under Blossoming Lotus Plant at the Water's Edge

Executed in ink and light color on paper, this painting in hanging scroll format depicts a white heron standing in shallow waters before grasses, reeds, and a blossoming lotus plant. The heron is portrayed in profile facing the viewer's left, with one leg straight and submerged beneath the water, the other bent and raised slightly above the surface, revealing its talons. The lotus plant artfully frames the bird -- a broad, dark colored lotus leaf provides a contrasting backdrop to the bird’s white, feathered body, while another curled leaf and full white blossom hover above its head like a canopy. While the heron is painted in reserve -- the white of the paper left unpainted while a series of short ink brushstrokes outline his main form -- select areas of foliage are saturated in wet colors, the diluted pigments pooled and layered to create a blurred, watery effect in the composition. The artist, An Chung-sik, inscribed, dated, signed, and applied his seals at the upper left, indicating that he painted the work in the eighth lunar month of the year corresponding to 1909. In both the Chinese and Korean traditions, the heron and lotus depicted together is a symbol of the ideal Confucian scholar, as the terms for both form a rebus representing the continual success of a scholar-official.