Nine-Dragon Falls (late 1800s): Art, History and Details

Nine-Dragon Falls (late 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Han Unpyeong (Korean).

The work and its context

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

The Nine-Dragon Falls 구룡포 is one of the popular tourist sites at the Diamond Mountain 금강산 in North Korea. Its V-shaped valley that opens into a rushing white waterfall is its major attraction, allowing visitors to experience the powerful forces of nature. In this painting, two excited scholar tourists accompanied by a Buddhist monk are enjoying both the spectacle and the roar generated by the cascading waterfall.

Object facts

• Title: Nine-Dragon Falls
• Date: late 1800s
• Creator attribution: Han Unpyeong (Korean)
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: ink and color on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 71 x 40.7 cm (27 15/16 x 16 in.); Painting only: 59.4 x 28.2 cm (23 3/8 x 11 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1915.215

A detail from the museum

The Nine-Dragon Falls, the main subject of this painting, is about 240 feet (74 meters) high.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• Keith, Elizabeth. Eastern Windows: An Artist's Notes of Travel in Japan, Hokkaido, Korea, China, and the Philippines. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1928.
• Pak Un-sun. A Study of Paintings of Mt. Geumgang [금강산도 연구] . Seoul: Iljisa, 1997.
• Our Land, Our True-View Landscape [우리 땅, 우리의 진경]. Chuncheon: Chuncheon National Museum, 2002.

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.