Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Mount Geumgang
Not on view
As its modern-day nickname “Fireworks Geumgang” indicates, this playful illustration portrays various peaks and other formations with flamelike edges. The overall impression is of a strange landscape ablaze. Anchoring the image is the large, cylindrical Biro Peak at the top, slightly left of center. This compositional scheme echoes and also transforms the traditional overview paintings of Mount Geumgang à la Jeong Seon. The various landscape elements are arranged in vertical progression without distinctions of depth and scale or between foreground and background. Such disregard for spatial context and the wildly quirky style of this work are not unusual for folk paintings of the Diamond Mountains.
By the late Joseon period, the desire to visit, illustrate, and own images of this well-known destination had spread beyond the literati circles and the court painters and their patrons. In this painting and in the screen to the right, the inscribed names of various peaks, temples, and other markers both reflect the tradition of labeling sites in earlier paintings of the Diamond Mountains and impart the schematic images a maplike quality.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
