Artwork
작자미상 화조도 조선|作者未詳 花鳥圖 朝鮮|Birds and Flowers
작자미상 화조도 조선|作者未詳 花鳥圖 朝鮮|Birds and Flowers is an ink painting. It dates from 1900 and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This ten-panel folding screen, titled Birds and Flowers, is an anonymous Korean painting executed with ink and color on silk.
About this work
The screen is from the late 19th or early 20th century, which is a unique time period for this type of art.
This painting shows birds and flowers on a ten-panel folding screen. It's made with ink and color on silk. The artist used a lot of detail to draw the flowers and birds, which makes it interesting.
The flowers and birds are drawn in a traditional style, but we don't know much about the artist. The screen is from the late 19th or early 20th century, which is a unique time period for this type of art.
You can learn more about this type of art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Subject & Meaning
This ten-panel folding screen presents a composition of birds, flowers, and plants rendered in ink and color on silk. Created during the late 19th or early 20th century by an unidentified Korean artist, the work falls within the genre of still life. The iconography focuses entirely on natural elements, depicting various avian figures interacting with floral and vegetative forms across the panels.
While specific symbolic meanings or narrative representations are not detailed in the available records, the piece serves as a decorative representation of the natural world characteristic of the period's bird-and-flower painting tradition.
Technique & Style
The screen is executed in ink and mineral/vegetable colors on silk, assembled as a ten-panel folding screen. Handling follows the Korean chaekgeodo tradition, with meticulous line drawing for petals and feathers, layered washes for volume, and delicate stippling to suggest texture in plumage and foliage.
Formal qualities emphasize symmetry and rhythm across the panels: blossoming branches and birds recur in mirrored arrangements, while negative space is used to articulate depth. The palette is restrained, favoring muted greens and ochres punctuated by reds and pinks in flowers, consistent with late Chosŏn-era restraint softened by late nineteenth-century tastes.
History & Provenance
The Birds and Flowers screen, attributed to an unknown Korean artist and dating to the late 19th–early 20th century, is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Its accession number is 1993.255, under which it is catalogued as part of the museum’s collection of Korean paintings. The work, executed in ink and color on silk as a ten‑panel folding screen, depicts avian and floral motifs typical of the still‑life genre.
The sources do not record any documented public exhibitions beyond occasional display within the museum’s Korean art galleries, and no further provenance details are provided.
Overview
This ten-panel folding screen, titled Birds and Flowers, is an anonymous Korean painting executed with ink and color on silk. It presents a detailed natural scene, characteristic of traditional Korean art. Dating from the late 19th or early 20th century, this piece reflects artistic practices during a transitional period in Korean history, offering insight into the enduring popularity of such themes.
Artist & collection
