Painting of One Hundred Themes (obverse) (late 1800s): Art, History and Details

Painting of One Hundred Themes (obverse) (late 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This screen depicts paintings on one side and poems on the other—an economical format often used in Korea to allow the viewer to enjoy both sides of one screen. The front features an assortment of bird-and-flower, landscape, and figural paintings executed according to the brush manner of more than 50 artists. A calligrapher has brushed several Chinese poems about the four seasons on the reverse side, among them "Composing in the Daytime of Summer" by Tang poet Liu Zongyuan (773–819) and "Composing when Spring Begins" by Song scholar Zhang Shi (1133–1180).

Object facts

• Title: Painting of One Hundred Themes (obverse)
• Date: late 1800s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Ten-panel folding screen affixed with album leaves (obverse), calligraphy (reverse), ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Image: 117.7 x 33.5 cm (46 5/16 x 13 3/16 in.); Panel: 164.5 x 43.6 cm (64 3/4 x 17 3/16 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Folding screen
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1998.286.a

A detail from the museum

Depicting small images of various subjects became one of the most popular types of painting toward the end of the 19th century.

Collection credit

Bequest of Gordon K. Mott

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kim, Chwijeong. "New Trend and Japhwabyung of Painting Circles During the Period of Modernization 개화기 화단의 신경향과 잡화병." Misulsanondan 27, vol. 12 (2008): 253-287.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.
• An, Bora. "A Study of ‘Baeknapdo byungpung’ in the late Joseon period: Focused on the collection of Boston Museum of Fine Arts 조선 말기의 百衲圖 屛風 연구: 보스턴미술관 소장본을 중심으로." Misulsayeongu 27, vol. 12 (2013): 323-351.

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.