Chosŏn Folding Screens of One Hundred Fans: A Case Study in Artistic Transmission

• In Event: Cultural Transmissions and Shared Pictorial Language in Early Modern East Asian Painting

Abstract

Folding Screens of One Hundred Fans (Kr: Baekseondo-byeongpung 百扇圖屛風) is a generic term used to categorize a painting theme that depicts numerous folding and round fans that are painted with landscapes or birds and flowers and arranged on folding screens. They were extensively produced in the late Chosŏn dynasty (nineteenth century) and suggest new cultural and painting trends and the development of new relationships between patron and painter during that time. Yet the subject has been little studied to date.
This paper critically examines both texts and images (painting styles) of two famous Folding Screens with One Hundred Fans against a background of cultural exchange between Chosŏn Korea, Qing China and Edo Japan. It discusses how early modern Korea appropriated both Japanese Folding Screens with Fans (Jp: senmen byōbu) in terms of composition and Chinese court paintings in terms of styles, and combined them into one painting theme. The paper further raises methodological issues, such as how we are to understand complicated layers of cultural transmission and appropriation in Chosŏn paintings in particular and in early modern East Asian paintings in general.

Author

• Jungeun Lee, University of Pittsburgh