Haesongdang Hall Gwanjun Portrait

This portrait is a floor-seated, cross-legged image shown from the left at a seven-tenths angle: seated in full lotus position on a patterned rush mat, the subject holds a jujangja, a ceremonial staff, in his left hand, while his right hand rests on his knee holding a string of prayer beads. The face was painted in white with the outlines fixed in ink; the upper eyelid line was drawn with a fine dark-ink line and the lower with a fine pale-ink line, the iris rendered in medium ink and the pupil marked with a dot of dark ink. The inner and outer corners of the eyes were softly shaded with pale ink to give a gentle, natural feel. The depiction of the hair and beard is distinctive compared with other portraits: after shading with pale ink, countless dots of white and black were added. The background was shaded in brown to suggest depth, and the patterned mat occupies less than a third of the whole picture. To the left of the figure is a low desk painted with a wood-grain pattern, on which the Avatamsaka Sutra is depicted, and the metal fittings at both ends of the staff and the corners of the kasaya robe are rendered in gold. Given that the composition has not yet achieved a stable triangular form, and that the decoration and attributes are simple, this work can be regarded as an early example among floor-seated, cross-legged portraits of this kind. On the left of the picture is an inscription in ink reading 'True Portrait of the Great Seon Master Haesongdang Gwanjun', and below the picture is a further ink inscription recording that it was made in the intercalary seventh month of the 51st year of the Qianlong era (1786); on the reverse is an ink inscription recording that it was enshrined at Geungnakam Hermitage of Tongdosa Temple on the seventeenth day of the eleventh month of the seventh year of the Jiaqing era (1802). This portrait bears the oldest absolute date, 1786, among the portraits held at Tongdosa Temple. The picture measures 82.2 cm in width and 107.8 cm in height.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Yangsan, Gyeongnam

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산