Giseongdo Painting Bottle

This is an eight-panel folding screen, a genre painting of a walled town (seongeup pungsokdo) that spreads a long, horizontal view of Pyongyang Fortress and the Daedonggang River together with the boating excursion of the Governor of Pyeongan on the Daedonggang River. Panel 1 shows the area outside Pyongyang Fortress; panels 2 to 5 show the Inner Fortress; panel 6 shows the Middle Fortress; and panels 7 to 8 show the Outer Fortress. The various landforms, facilities and government offices are all labelled with their names in ink, in considerable detail. The consistent viewpoint, looking down obliquely from the right of Pyongyang Fortress, gives a natural sense of depth and elevation to the buildings, arranged in parallel diagonal rows, and to the terrain. The landscape is washed in ochre and green in the blue-and-green painting style, with soft, thick blue brush lines following the folds of the mountains to suggest shading and texture, while the areas near the outlines are treated with stippling and short hemp-fibre texture strokes. In the depiction of buildings, brick-built fortress walls are visible, and roof outlines such as the ridge lines are drawn in white. Pink-flowered trees convey a sense of the season. On the Daedonggang River at the right of the composition, a splendid boating scene of the Governor of Pyeongan unfolds, recalling the "Boating on the Daedonggang River" scene from the Painting of the Welcome for the Governor of Pyeongan. Several eight-panel screens depicting the full view of Pyongyang survive under titles such as "Full Map of Pyongyang" or "Full Map of Giseong" (an old name for Pyongyang); their viewpoint and composition are generally similar to this painting, suggesting that a single format became established through repeated copying. There are, however, two variants: one showing the Governor's procession at the bottom of the composition, and one without. In most versions with a procession, the retinue is drawn stretching along the land south of the Daedonggang, showing the moment before crossing the river; it is unusual that this painting, held by the Seoul Museum of History, instead shows the boating scene on the Daedonggang River itself. Unlike conventional maps of a capital city, this painting is a rare work combining a map of walled Pyongyang with a scene of the Governor's boating excursion, and it is valuable as evidence of both the excellence and the changing forms of late-Joseon townscape genre painting; among paintings of this type depicting the full view of Pyongyang Fortress, it is also in good condition.

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Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산