Bird Sleeping on a Plum Tree
Yang Ki-hun (Seuk-Eun) (Korean, 1843–1919?)
early 1900s
- Medium
- hanging scroll; ink on silk
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Overall: 103 x 112.4 cm (40 9/16 x 44 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Korean Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The plum’s status as the orthodox symbol of the literati’s pure spirit originated in Lin Bu’s poem "Tiny Plum Flowers in Mountain Garden." The plum was also widely depicted in Korean paintings as part of the Four Gentlemen—or Four Gracious Plants—motif. Here, the plum and bamboo express literati spirituality while the bird with its head pointing downward indicates the artist’s feelings about the unstable situation at the end of the Joseon period. Yang Ki-hun was a Korean scholar-official renowned for painting and calligraphy. King Gojong (reigned 1863–1907) was one of Yang's prominent patrons.
