Lot Essay
This screen commemorates a banquet held on February 12, 1830 to celebrate thirty years of rule by King Sunjo. The 23rd king of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910), Sunjo was born in 1792 and succeeded to the throne in 1801 at the age of ten. The present screen is identical in style to a screen of circa 1847, Korean National Treasure no. 732, Celebration of the 40th Birthday of Queen Mother Cho Taebi, belonging to the Dong-A University Museum in Pusan.1 The Sunjo screen is definitely the more important of the two, however: it is seventeen years earlier in date, and it commemorates a major event in the king's reign.
The far right panel of the Sunjo screen records poems exchanged at the banquet by fifteen court ministers and the king himself. The king's poems are the first and last ones on the panel. In keeping with Confucian ideals prevailing at the Korean court, the king expressed his wish that the celebration would help ensure the continuation of peace and harmony in the kingdom, that Heaven and the common people alike would participate. The far left panel of the screen records the name and date of the rite, as well as the names and titles of the most important officials present.
The rituals depicted on the screen take place in two primary walled courtyards of the royal palace in Seoul. The more important of the two courtyards is the men's compound shown in three panels to our right of center. The women's compound, flanked by subsidiary buildings and garden areas, is represented on the three panels left of center. Choson dynasty Confucian practice required the men and women of a household to live in separate quarters; young children of both sexes stayed in the women's quarters, older boys in the men's.
In the large pavilion at the back of each of the two main courtyards on the screen, an empty throne on a dais signifies the presence of the king, or queen, respectively. The royal personages themselves were considered too august to be depicted on the screens. A Sun, Moon, and Five Peaks screen stands behind each of the two thrones on the present screen. (The sun and moon are not visible here.) Such screens were traditionally placed behind royal thrones in Choson audience halls where they signify the element of the king as the nexus between the earthly and heavenly realms. This subject was restricted by decree to royal use. In the curtained alcove to the right of the queen's throne on the present screen we see a Bird-and-Flower screen. Screens with this theme done by artisan painters stood in the women's quarters of all but the poorest Korean homes. Paired birds and animals were thought to promote happy marriages and household harmony.
Like the architectural elements, most of the figures on the Sunjo Banquet screen are arranged in strict vertical or horizontal rows. The two-dimensional, ideographic style associated with traditional court painting has been described as "mysteriously archaistic, insistently nonindividualistic, and intensely symbolic."2 The Korean formula for court art has a highly stylized linear clarity, with motifs isolated from each other and gathered in a single, flat pictorial plane devoid of atmosphere or the illusion of depth. A tension is created by the conflict between the overall schematic, ideographic forms and the meticulous inner details. On this screen there are civil officials in court attire, military officials in ceremonial armor, standard bearers, archers, guards with matchlock muskets, quards with halberds, groups of musicians and dancers, and various attendants, some of whom are preparing ceremonial offerings of cooked rice. Costumes and accoutrements are rendered with astonishingly meticulous detail. Each guard or attendant has a sprig of blossom tied to his hat, in keeping with the festivity of the occasion. Since Choson dynasty court painters were forbidden by decree from signing their screens, the present example, as significant as it is, remains anonymous.
1. Ahn Hwi-joon, The National Treasures of Korea, Volume 10, Paintings (Seoul, 1989), pl. 184, fig. 141.
2. Hongnam Kim, Korean Art of the Eighteenth Century (The Asia Society, 1993), p. 48
The far right panel of the Sunjo screen records poems exchanged at the banquet by fifteen court ministers and the king himself. The king's poems are the first and last ones on the panel. In keeping with Confucian ideals prevailing at the Korean court, the king expressed his wish that the celebration would help ensure the continuation of peace and harmony in the kingdom, that Heaven and the common people alike would participate. The far left panel of the screen records the name and date of the rite, as well as the names and titles of the most important officials present.
The rituals depicted on the screen take place in two primary walled courtyards of the royal palace in Seoul. The more important of the two courtyards is the men's compound shown in three panels to our right of center. The women's compound, flanked by subsidiary buildings and garden areas, is represented on the three panels left of center. Choson dynasty Confucian practice required the men and women of a household to live in separate quarters; young children of both sexes stayed in the women's quarters, older boys in the men's.
In the large pavilion at the back of each of the two main courtyards on the screen, an empty throne on a dais signifies the presence of the king, or queen, respectively. The royal personages themselves were considered too august to be depicted on the screens. A Sun, Moon, and Five Peaks screen stands behind each of the two thrones on the present screen. (The sun and moon are not visible here.) Such screens were traditionally placed behind royal thrones in Choson audience halls where they signify the element of the king as the nexus between the earthly and heavenly realms. This subject was restricted by decree to royal use. In the curtained alcove to the right of the queen's throne on the present screen we see a Bird-and-Flower screen. Screens with this theme done by artisan painters stood in the women's quarters of all but the poorest Korean homes. Paired birds and animals were thought to promote happy marriages and household harmony.
Like the architectural elements, most of the figures on the Sunjo Banquet screen are arranged in strict vertical or horizontal rows. The two-dimensional, ideographic style associated with traditional court painting has been described as "mysteriously archaistic, insistently nonindividualistic, and intensely symbolic."2 The Korean formula for court art has a highly stylized linear clarity, with motifs isolated from each other and gathered in a single, flat pictorial plane devoid of atmosphere or the illusion of depth. A tension is created by the conflict between the overall schematic, ideographic forms and the meticulous inner details. On this screen there are civil officials in court attire, military officials in ceremonial armor, standard bearers, archers, guards with matchlock muskets, quards with halberds, groups of musicians and dancers, and various attendants, some of whom are preparing ceremonial offerings of cooked rice. Costumes and accoutrements are rendered with astonishingly meticulous detail. Each guard or attendant has a sprig of blossom tied to his hat, in keeping with the festivity of the occasion. Since Choson dynasty court painters were forbidden by decree from signing their screens, the present example, as significant as it is, remains anonymous.
1. Ahn Hwi-joon, The National Treasures of Korea, Volume 10, Paintings (Seoul, 1989), pl. 184, fig. 141.
2. Hongnam Kim, Korean Art of the Eighteenth Century (The Asia Society, 1993), p. 48