Pavilion by a Waterfall and Stream

Artists

Description

Painted in ink and light colors on paper, this rectangular album leaf depicts an autumnal landscape with a scholar seated in a riverside pavilion. Set on stilts that elevate it above the waters, the thatched pavilion is situated between the river and a mountain down whose sides cascades a waterfall, its waters flowing under the pavilion and into the river. The scholar gazes toward the composition’s left edge, which is dominated by the river and the distant mountains, whose details are completely obscured by the intervening mists, which impart a light blue hue. The thatched pavilion appears at the bottom of the painting, in the center foreground. A series of tree-capped hillocks arcs from the composition’s lower right corner to the composition’s center, framing the multi-room pavilion. A tall peak with craggy, vertical sides and plateaus at its top dominates the right half of the composition. The waterfall tumbles down the front of the dominant peak, falling into an unseen stream that flows to the foreground, under the pavilion, and into the lake. The artist’s short, vertically oriented, four-character inscription reading "Bi Ryu Kye Kak" (Chinese, "Fei Liu Xi Ge") appears in the upper left corner of the painting; the inscription can be loosely translated as “Pavilion by a Waterfall and Stream.” The artist’s rectangular, red, relief seal reading "So Ch’i" (Chinese, "Xiao Chi") appears immediately to the (viewer’s) left of the inscription’s lower two characters. The artist’s inscription/title, particularly the characters "Bi Ryu" (Chinese "Fei Liu"), which Ho Ryon used to mean “waterfall,” suggests that the scene might well have been inspired by the Chinese poem “Gazing at the Waterfall on Mt. Lu” (Chinese "Wang Lu Shan Pu Bu"), which was composed by the Tang-dynasty poet Li Bai (701-762): Gazing at the Waterfall on Mt. Lu (Censer Mountain) By Li Bai The mists enveloping Censer Mountain (Mt. Lu) shimmer violet in the sunshine. The distant waterfall recalls a river hanging from the sky, Its flying waters cascading straight down from three thousand feet up. Is it the Milky Way tumbling from the highest heavens, star by star? Despite its likely literary reference to a poem of Li Bai, the painting’s style derives from that of the Qing-dynasty Orthodox-school masters Wang Hui (1632-1717) and Wang Yuanqi (1642-1715). The portrayal of the scholar and of the thatched pavilion recalls the works of the Ming literati painter Shen Zhou (1427-1509).

Dimensions

Painting proper: H. 21 x W. 36.7 cm (8 1/4 x 14 7/16 in.) Mounting: H. 23.7 x W. 36.8 cm (9 5/16 x 14 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Kyle Edward Wilson, Jr., Korea, (1965-2002); to his estate, Alvin, Texas, (2002-2003) sold; through [Estate auction, Houston, Texas, 2003], sold; to [the Kang Collection, New York, (2003-2011)], sold; to Harvard Art Museums, 2011. Footnotes: Created in Korea in the second half of the nineteenth century; Kyle Edward Wilson, Jr. (1931-2002), Alvin, Texas (purchased in Korea in 1965, when Mr. Wilson worked for the U.S. Department of Defense as a private citizen; transported to the U.S. in 1967).