Taehak Gathering Album

The Taehak Gathering Album is a gyecheop, a commemorative album made by a group of associates, produced by Yi Jeong-bo (1693-1766), Rector of Seonggyungwan, together with nine student-participants to mark the completion of the Taehak Sokjeon (Supplementary Regulations of the Taehak, another name for Seonggyungwan). The cover, made of neunghwamun paper bearing a diamond-flower pattern, carries the ink-written title "Taehak Gyecheop." The first page bears the jwamok, a list of the participants; the second page carries the Bangungdo, a plan of the Seonggyungwan campus; and the third and fourth pages carry colophons written respectively by the jinsa graduates Sin Seok-gyu and Bak Ik-ryeong. Sin Seok-gyu's colophon shows that the album was made in the twenty-third year of King Yeongjo (1747). The jwamok records each participant's courtesy name, year of birth, ancestral seat, the name of the saengwon or jinsa licentiate examination he had passed, and his place of residence. Below Yi Jeong-bo, Rector of Seonggyungwan, nine men aged from thirty-five to seventy-four are listed in order of age; all were saengwon or jinsa graduates who had not sat the higher civil examination. The Bangungdo is a kind of site plan that Yi Jeong-bo had a court painter draw, showing the layout and structure of the Seonggyungwan buildings. Its outlines are rendered in fine, sharp brushlines and coloured in red and blue, in the traditional multi-viewpoint plan format, with the surrounding landscape treated in the blue-and-green style. The painting shows that along the central north-south axis stood the triple gate, the Daeseongjeon shrine hall and the Myeongnyundang lecture hall; to the west of this axis lay an area with the Biseondang hall and the kitchen quarters, and to the east an area with the Hyanggwancheong, the Jeongnokcheong and the dining hall. West of the Hyanggwancheong is a small drawing of the Yugilgak, a pavilion built to store the equipment used at the Grand Archery Ceremony of 1743. North-west of the Daeseongjeon, the area containing the Gyeseongsa shrine and the Jeonsacheong is marked off separately. Also shown are the Bansu stream, which flows around three sides of the site, the three Bansu bridges crossing it, the Hayeondae platform south of the dining-hall area, where the royal palanquin was set down, and the stele pavilion housing the Tangpyeongbi, the Stele of Impartiality. In 1785, the ninth year of King Jeongjo, the then Rector of Seonggyungwan, Min Jong-hyeon, compiled the Taehakji (Gazetteer of the Taehak) by royal order, and its first volume, in the chapter "Construction," includes a woodblock-printed Bangungdo. As this print was made some thirty years after the album, comparing the two allows the changes made to the Seonggyungwan buildings in the intervening period to be traced. The colophons record the circumstances and date of the album's making. Taken together, the writings of Sin Seok-gyu and Bak Ik-ryeong explain that although a Taehak Seongjeon already existed, changing circumstances made a supplementary code necessary, so several students revised and compiled a draft, which Yi Jeong-bo completed as the Taehak Sokjeon (called the Taehak Songnok by Bak Ik-ryeong). They further record that Yi Jeong-bo had a court painter draw the Bangungdo and had the names of those who took part written down to make the album. The colophons add that the participants later met again at Isongjeong pavilion, where they admired the blossoms, held a lecture, played the gayageum and composed poems, but note that these scenes were not recorded in painted form. Among all gyecheop known today, this is the only surviving example made by Seonggyungwan students themselves, and it is the oldest surviving material to show the layout and structure of the Seonggyungwan buildings visually, giving it high value as a historical source both for this reason and for what it reveals about the diversity of gyecheop production in the Joseon period. Although the area around the painting has suffered some insect damage, the mounting and picture surface otherwise retain their original form as made.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산