Mountain Spirit Painting of Jingwansa Temple

This Buddhist painting is a mountain spirit painting (sanshindo) currently enshrined in the Dokseonggak Hall of Jingwansa Temple. It fills a tall, vertical canvas with the mountain spirit shown seated, leaning against a tiger. The mountain spirit wears red robes and a horsehair headband, appearing as an elderly man; he holds a banana-leaf fan in his left hand while his right hand rests near his chest, and he sits at an angle, leaning against the tiger. His face, with its finely rendered whiskers, resembles that of a kindly old grandfather, while the tiger wrapped around him is depicted in a humorous, playful manner reminiscent of tigers in folk paintings (minhwa). Bright crimson pigment is set off against green, and together with the tiger's yellow and white tones the whole painting has a bright, lively palette. There is no inscription recording the date of production or the painter's name, but judging from the crimson colouring and the way the tiger is rendered, the work is presumed to date from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. The landscape background that normally appears behind mountain spirit paintings is omitted here, and the composition instead brings only the mountain spirit and the tiger to the fore, giving the work a bold yet simple design.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산