Orchid and Rock

An important painter and calligrapher of the late Chosŏn period, Kim Ŭng-wŏn is best remembered for his depictions of orchids, which he painted in the manner of the nineteenth-century master Prince Yi Ha-ŭng. (A magnificent screen by Prince Yi Ha-ŭng is featured in this gallery's glass-fronted screen case.) A professor of painting and calligraphy at the Institute of Arts in Seoul, Kim was also one of the founders of the Painting and Calligraphy Association, established in 1918. The orchid, a symbol of loyalty and personal integrity, held a fascination for literati painters, since its grasslike leaves and delicate, simple flowers lent themselves to depiction with calligraphic brushwork. Chinese artists had begun to paint the orchid during the Song dynasty (960-1279), the subject becoming ever more popular in the succeeding Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties. By the eighteenth century, the taste for paintings of orchids had spread to Korea, where these works enjoyed considerable vogue in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chinese and Korean artists typically paired orchids and rocks, the orchids coaxing the artist to employ his most delicate, curvilinear brushwork, the rocks tempting him to present his most forceful and expressionistic brushwork. The inscription on this painting translates as: While sitting quietly, I sense a subtle fragrance. Such subtlety exists only between reality and imagination. --So-ho