Poem on Plum (1700s–1800s): Art, History and Details

Poem on Plum (1700s–1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Yi Hwang (Korean, 1501–1570).

The work and its context

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

For Yi Hwang, a celebrated scholar and poet in Korea in the 1500s, writing poems was an escape from partisan politics. Because its flowers often bloom in the middle of winter, Joseon period Korean scholars like Yi found plum blossoms a perfect subject to express the value of endurance and self-cultivation. In his numerous poems, Yi used plum blossom imagery to express his feelings. The poem on this hanging scroll reads: “Wishing to fly away, red leaves left the mountain villa. Their large sleeves are frosted due to blue clouds. The clouds in the sky look upright, which are beyond human beings’ ability. The plum tree whispered to me that [the leaves] fell from the wind and landed on the fence.” The mountain villa in this poem may refer to the Dosan Academy, a Confucian school that Yi established after his retirement, and the red leaves of the plum blossom are probably Yi’s poetic personification.

Object facts

• Title: Poem on Plum
• Date: 1700s–1800s
• Creator attribution: Yi Hwang (Korean, 1501–1570)
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Calligraphy
• Technique: hanging scroll; ink on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 115 x 68.2 cm (45 1/4 x 26 7/8 in.); Painting only: 46 x 52.7 cm (18 1/8 x 20 3/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1992.138

A detail from the museum

Yi Hwang, the author of this calligraphy, composed more than 100 poems on plum blossoms.

Collection credit

Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of The Honorable Joseph P. Carroll and Roberta Carroll, M.D.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• 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.