Yeongwonsa Temple Nectar Ritual Painting

This is a gamnotaenghwa (Nectar Ritual Painting) made in 1759, the 35th year of King Yeongjo. Its brushwork is fluid throughout, the whole composition is full of vitality, and it is dominated by deep, subdued reds and greens, so that it fully displays the general characteristics of eighteenth-century Buddhist paintings. Because the votive inscription records its exact date of production and its painter, and because it was painted solely by the court painter Ogwan, it is also valuable material for understanding Ogwan's painting style, and it is therefore highly worthy of designation and preservation. A gamnotaenghwa is a Buddhist painting that mainly depicts scenes of guiding sentient beings who have fallen into hell towards the Pure Land. It is also called Uranbungyeongbyeonsangdo, an illustration of the Ullambana Sutra. It depicts the story of the monk Mongnyeon (Maudgalyayana), who, seeing his deceased mother suffering in the realm of hungry ghosts, unable to eat, appealed to the Buddha; following the Buddha's teaching, on Baekjung Day he made offerings of white rice, cooked food and the five fruits to the buddhas of the ten directions and to monks on behalf of his parents of the past, present and seven generations, thereby saving his mother and allowing her to enjoy happiness in the heavens. Accordingly, gamnotaenghwa are centred on a table of offerings set in the middle of the composition: the upper part depicts the Buddha and his retinue coming to receive sentient beings and the Bodhisattva Inrowang guiding them; to the left of the central offering table a memorial rite is depicted, and on the opposite side Taoist deities including the Queen Mother of the West appear; below the offering table are various depictions of hungry ghosts and the sufferings of hell, along with scenes of everyday life. In this respect, gamnodo paintings can be said to best show the character of Joseon-period Buddhism, which combined a variety of thoughts and beliefs including Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and folk religion; furthermore, the varied scenes of everyday life in the lower register show genre-painting elements, making this type of painting of interest across several fields including general painting. In this particular painting, the scenes of hell and everyday life depicted below the offering table are rendered relatively simply, while the upper part of the composition, showing Amitabha Buddha and his retinue coming to receive the deceased, occupies a large portion of the picture. The upper section is divided into three parts: five buddhas in the centre, Avalokitesvara and Ksitigarbha on the left, and the Bodhisattva Inrowang on the right. These three scenes are separated by mountains, while the scenes of hell and everyday life in the lower part are divided by mountains and trees. The composition, with its varied depiction of scenes, is free and full of vitality, an effect that is further heightened by the deeply ravined mountains and the relatively realistic rendering of trees. The deep, subdued reds and greens, together with the brown and black used in the background, give the painting an overall dark tonality. Although there are several places where the surface has cracked and the pigment has flaked away, this painting well demonstrates the general characteristics of mid-eighteenth-century Buddhist paintings, such as its neatly composed figures, meticulous line-work and subdued colouring. In particular, the rendering of the mountains in the upper part of the composition, which emphasises the heavenly realm, and the vivid, lifelike expressions of the figures in the memorial-rite, hell and genre scenes, together create an unusually lively composition for a Buddhist painting of this period, making it an outstanding work.

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Where it is

Region

Pyeongchang, Gangwon

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산