Joseon Painters as Envoys to China

ㅇ Period: October 27 (Thu), 2011 – January 15 (Sun), 2012

ㅇ Venue: Painting Room in the Calligraphy and Painting Gallery (2nd Fl), National Museum of Korea

ㅇ Exhibits: 33 works including Paintings of Wonders of Yingtai by Kang Se-hwang

The National Museum of Korea is holding “Joseon Painters as Envoys to China”, a special exhibition of a collection of 33 ink paintings and calligraphic works which shed light on various aspects of the diplomatic visits of Joseon envoys to China.

Historical records state that the Joseon Dynasty sent about 500 diplomatic missions to China throughout its 500-year history. Each mission involved about 300 people, headed by an official government delegation consisting of about 30 officials including the jeongsa (chief envoy), busa (deputy chief envoy), seojanggwan (document officer), yeokgwan (translating official), uigwan (medical practitioners) and hwawon (professional artists). This exhibition presents scenes of the diplomatic tours and cultural exchange activities as depicted by the painters who, as official members of each mission, had direct access to Chinese arts and culture.

The exhibition consists of three parts. In the first, subtitled “Encountering an Unfamiliar Culture: Reception and Attendance of the Envoys,” visitors are guided to paintings depicting the moments when Joseon and Ming officials met with and parted from each other. Among the paintings, those collected under the title, Sea Passage to Ming (Hanghaejocheon-do,) portray the travels of a mission sent in 1624 to inform the Chinese imperial court of the enthronement of King Injo (r. 1623-1649). The paintings are vivid depictions of various scenes of the diplomatic tour and the landscapes they passed through, including a scene of Joseon envoys preparing for a sea voyage at Seonsapo Port, their arrival at Dengzhou, and their journey by land to Beijing, the Ming capital.

The exhibits in the second part, “Painting Practice of the Literati as Envoys in the Late Joseon,” include two great painting albums, Three Wondrous Sites on the Envoy Passage (Sarosamgi-cheop) and Wonders of Yingtai (Yeongdaegigwan-cheop), painted by Kang Se-hwang (1713~1791), who took a long-coveted opportunity to participate in the mission only after turning seventy years of age, resulting in the production of a series of masterpieces that vividly capture various travel scenes.

The third part, “The Literati and Diplomatic Procession as Sites of Cultural Exchange between Joseon and Qing),” is focused on the vigorous exchanges between intellectuals of the Joseon and Qing dynasties. Art historians are agreed that the culmination of the artistic exchange between Korea and China in the 18^th and 19^th centuries is Wintry Days, a masterpiece painted by Kim Jeong-hui (a.k.a. Chusa, 1786-1856), which was later taken to China by a court interpreter named Yi Sang-jeok (1804-1865), where it received numerous postscripts from leading Chinese literati artists praising the work’s aesthetic excellence and profound meaning. The exhibition also contains the painting The City of Supreme Peace, an artistic representation of the ideal society which Late Joseon intellectual dreamt of on the basis of the experience and vision they had acquired on their diplomatic tours to China.

The exhibition is expected to offer art lovers a rare opportunity to look at some of the masterpieces produced by great literati artists of Joseon who participated in diplomatic missions to China and acquire a deeper understanding of Korea-China cultural exchange and Korean history in that period.

Click here for the exhibition details!