Gathering among the Members of Office Censor-General

1700s

Gathering among the Members of Office Censor-General, 1700s. Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392-1910). Hanging scroll with calligraphy, ink and light colors on paper; painting only: 39.4 x 56.5 cm (15 1/2 x 22 1/4 in.); overall: 122.6 x 68.5 cm (48 1/4 x 26 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1997.147 In the early Joseon period, paintings of scholar-officials’ gatherings (gyehoedo) gained popularity among the Korean elite. This painting was commissioned by Sim Eongwang, an official of the Joseon court, to depict a miwon gyehoedo, a gathering of cabinet members (saganwon). This meeting is assumed to have been ordered around the time when Sim was the head of the saganwon in 1530. At the bottom of the painting, he added his poem to express a "literati respect for high spirituality," as stated in the first line. The poem was later recorded in his anthology titled Eochonjip (Book of Fisher Village). This painting itself, however, is an 18th-century copy of the original 16th-century painting. The gathering portrayed in this painting took place in the 16th century, but the painting itself is a later copy, possibly of the 18th century.