Bird Sleeping on a Plum Tree (early 1900s): Art, History and Details

Bird Sleeping on a Plum Tree (early 1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yang Ki-hun (Seuk-Eun) (Korean, 1843–1919?).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The plum’s status as the orthodox symbol of the literati’s pure spirit originated in Lin Bu’s poem "Tiny Plum Flowers in Mountain Garden." The plum was also widely depicted in Korean paintings as part of the Four Gentlemen—or Four Gracious Plants—motif. Here, the plum and bamboo express literati spirituality while the bird with its head pointing downward indicates the artist’s feelings about the unstable situation at the end of the Joseon period. Yang Ki-hun was a Korean scholar-official renowned for painting and calligraphy. King Gojong (reigned 1863–1907) was one of Yang's prominent patrons.

Object facts

• Title: Bird Sleeping on a Plum Tree
• Date: early 1900s
• Creator attribution: Yang Ki-hun (Seuk-Eun) (Korean, 1843–1919?)
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 103 x 112.4 cm (40 9/16 x 44 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1998.31

A detail from the museum

Yang Ki-hun was one of the most commercially successful painters active in the late 19th century.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Painting by 18th-century Italian Master Gaetano Gandolfi among Works Added to CMA Collection,” March 24, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.
• Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.