해강 김규진 묵란도|海岡 金圭鎭 墨蘭圖|Orchids in Hanging Basket

Kim Gyujin

early 20th century · Hanging scroll; ink on paper · Asian Art

Kim Gyu-jin lived during a time of political and social transition—through the last decades of the 500-year-old Joseon dynasty. As an eighteen-year-old, the artist, enamored with old and new technologies, studied ink painting and calligraphy for a decade in China, and later photography, in Japan, in 1907. In 1920 he completed the commission of two monumental polychrome wall paintings of Geumgang, or the Diamond Mountains, for Changdeok Palace. These delicate orchids with dark sprays of leaves show Kim’s skill as an ink painter. Orchids are a symbol of virtue and, together with plum blossoms, bamboo, and chrysanthemums, are part of a quartet—known as the Four Gentlemen (sagunja)—favored by literati painters. Here, Kim departs from convention by placing the flowers in a basket rather than showing them sprouting among rocks. The basket tilts diagonally as if falling forward, suggesting that these orchids are symbols of virtue not because they thrive in a harsh natural environment but because they withstand the constraints and dangers of a man-made one.

Artist

Kim Gyujin

Date

early 20th century

Medium

Hanging scroll; ink on paper

Culture

Korea

Department

Asian Art

Credit line

Mary Griggs Burke Collection, Gift of the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation, 2015