Hanging Scroll Painting of Seonamsa Temple

A gwaebul is a large Buddhist painting hung from a pole erected outdoors, in a temple courtyard or similar open space, for use at dharma services and rites held in the open air, in place of a Buddha image set up on an altar. The Seonamsa gwaebul is a large hanging painting 4.5 m wide and 9.5 m tall, newly made and enshrined at Seonamsa Temple in 1926 as a Maitreya gwaebul. At the centre of the composition the Maitreya Buddha stands facing forward on a lotus flower, with a halo surrounding both the body and the head, the surrounding space filled with cloud patterns, forming a single, solitary Buddha image. Shading is used throughout on both body and robes. The Buddha's body is painted in a bright, strong yellow overlaid with a thin wash of red to give it volume, and the face is slender and well balanced, with half-closed eyes, a straight nose, a small mouth and long ears rendered in a manner that is generally neat yet well proportioned. The robe covers both shoulders and is rendered mainly in red, green, blue and deep blue; the halo combines a green head-halo with a wave-patterned body-halo in green, yellow, green and crimson, giving a sense of splendour, while the outer edge bears a schematic rendering of red flame-like light. The Seonamsa gwaebul carries on the style of Buddhist painting of the late to final years of the Joseon dynasty, and is valuable evidence for the style of Buddhist painting and the practice of gwaebul production around 1926. It is also an unusually large gwaebul, produced as part of a major Buddhist project undertaken in the Yeongnam region in the early twentieth century.

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Where it is

Region

Busanjin-gu, Busan

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료