Geese Returning Home (1600s): Art, History and Details

Geese Returning Home (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In this hanging scroll, wild geese are portrayed engaging in different activities: descending to a marsh, gathering in flocks, grazing on plants, and dipping their heads under the water. In Korean paintings, images of geese serve as the symbol of seasonal change because they migrate from northern areas such as Siberia to stay in the Korean Peninsula during the late fall and winter.

Object facts

• Title: Geese Returning Home
• Date: 1600s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 182.9 x 49.6 cm (72 x 19 1/2 in.); Painting only: 102.9 x 32.7 cm (40 1/2 x 12 7/8 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1993.159

A detail from the museum

In Korea, the word for geese in a grove of reeds, noan, has the same pronunciation as the word for "the comfortable life at old age." With this double meaning for a happy life, the motif of returning geese gained popularity in paintings.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “1993 Annual Report.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.
• 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.