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General View of Mount Bongnae
Jeong Seon (artist name: Gyeomjae) Korean
Not on view
Bongnae, the Korean transliteration of the Chinese name Penglai, refers to a paradisiacal mountain in Chinese mythology where Daoist immortals resided; it also has associations with summer. Mount Geumgang, even prior to the Joseon dynasty, had both Buddhist and Daoist connections, the symbolisms of which prevailed in the eighteenth century.
This is the only painting of the Diamond Mountains by Jeong Seon in a long, horizontal format. The scroll presents a tour-de-force visual journey through the varying topographical features of the western region of Geumgang. This panorama represents a constructed composition, based on sketches Jeong made during his travels to the mountains, bringing together multiple sceneries from different perspectives as one seamless experience. Inscriptions on the silk beyond the pictorial space displayed here indicate that this work was in a Chinese collection in the mid-twentieth century, and detail the discovery that the artist was a Korean painter renowned for realistic landscapes.
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