A Royal Outing

This impressive screen painting, created for the Korean royal court of the 19th century, creates a double fantasy world that is both an idealized blue and green setting and a Korean vision of an elite hunting party in China. Such themes from Chinese literature were popular subjects at the Korean court. It is easy to lose oneself in the many details found within this large screen.

Moving right to left, there are roughly five groups of figures. The first is a mounted party of soldiers, officers, and officials emerging from a mountain pass. Next, in the center, is a seated man in red, dressed as a Chinese ruler of the past and surrounded by his guards. Just to their left is a field kitchen, where food and wine are being prepared in large cauldrons. In the foreground near the bridge, more goods for the party are carried in by people and animals, including camels, which were unfamiliar to the painters. Women and children in three carts seem to be preparing to leave at the lower left. In the background, horses frolic and oxen are led to pasture, while three deer peek out from the forest.