Grapevine
Choe Seok-hwan (Korean, active first half of 19th century)
early 1800s
- Medium
- eight-panel folding screen; ink on paper
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Image: 100.5 x 345 cm (39 9/16 x 135 13/16 in.)
- Culture
- Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Korean Art
- Credit line
- Gift from the Collection of George Gund III
- 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
July is the season of the ripening deep blue grapes, and also the month when the monsoon season begins in Korea. To the accompaniment of stormy summer wind, grape vines make a spectacular full circle across the surface of this eight-panel folding screen. The artist employed a variety of ink tones to create a sense of swift movement of grapevines amid turbulent storms.
Since their first introduction to the Korean peninsula around the 7th century through the Silk Road, grapes were used as artistic motifs. Artists embellished the surface of mother-of-pearl lacquer boxes or blue-and-white porcelain, while scholar-poets composed poems about the luscious sweet sourness of green grapes. By the late 19th century, grapes became the icon of fertility: the fruit grows in large clusters of many individual grapes, evoking the image of a stable clan with many descendants.
