1879년 순종의 천연두 완치 기념 계병(稧屛)의 제작과 수장

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the process in which a royal commemorative screen painting was ordered, produced, financed, and stored at the royal court during the nineteenth century. Even though the Joseon court had a long-standing tradition of producing commemorative paintings to celebrate royal events, very little has been known about its literary evidence regarding the practice. However, one case of a screen painting, which was created to celebrate Crown Prince Sunjong (1874-1926, r. 1907-1910)’s recovery from smallpox in 1879, provides abundant resource to shed light on the characteristics of royal commemorative screens. From productions for this event, five distinct screen paintings are currently preserved in the National Museum of Korea, the National Palace Museum of Korea, Korea University Museum, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and the Amorepacific Museum of Art respectively. The former three works are recording paintings to depict the Investiture Ceremony of the Crown Prince, while the latter two are those of Sipjangsaengdo (paintings of the ten symbols of longevity). In this paper, I will mainly focus on following three issues regarding 1879 commemorative screens: first, their creation; second, the storage of them; and third, the financial basis for their production. As for the creation issue, since the Joseon court paid more attention to the inheritance of the tradition than to the real depiction of the ceremony scenes per se , the paintings of the Investiture Ceremony in the 1879 case also followed the model of precedent screens of the rituals for previous Crown Princes rather than showed the real scene from the ceremony. Also, general paintings such as Sipjangsaengdo were produced along with record paintings of the Investiture Ceremony as one set, also following the precedents of former Investiture Ceremony screens. As for the storage issue, the royal inventory list called balgi allows us to understand that since those screens of 1879 were made as gifts to King Gojong (r. 1863-1907) and Crown Prince Sunjong, they have been stored in special screens storages of the residential palaces of the King and the Crown Prince. Balgis also indicate that those screens were moved to an extra storage out of palace during 1905-1906. These facts imply that commemorative screens were managed for storage and transition under court control for at least more than 25 years after their productions. As for the financial issue, three letters from a private collection, which are about the demand of financial aid for commemorative screens in 1879, help us to understand how the court secured the high expense for screens at every event of royal ceremonies. These sources reveal that the production of commemorative painting screens was not at court’s own expense but at local officials’ in the form of an additional tax, a kind of bribery paid to the central government to maintain their local political power. This money must have been a big burden to local officials since they repeatedly made petitions to reduce this financial burden. Ironically, the practice could be maintained until the end of the dynasty thanks to this financial structure. This study attempts to shed light on the production and consumption of commemorative screens by an analysis of a case from 1879. I hope that this case study will contribute to a better understanding of royal commissioned painting screens.