Joseon Dynasty painting finishes 15-month makeover before heading back to Germany

Late-Joseon painting "The Joyous Banquet of Guo Ziyi" underwent a 15-month conservation makeover in Korea and was shown to the press before returning to its home museum in Germany.

The final look of "The Joyous Banquet of Guo Ziyi,” a late-Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) painting in the collection at Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, Germany, after its conservation work in Korea. [OVERSEAS KOREAN CULTURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION]

Late-Joseon painting "The Joyous Banquet of Guo Ziyi," or "Gwakbunyang haengnakdo" in Korean, owned by the Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, Germany, opened a new life chapter in its motherland after 15 months of conservation.

The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation on Monday revealed the painting on an eight-panel folding screen to the local press at the Jung-Jae Conservation Center in southern Seoul, which conducted the conservation, before it heads back to the German museum later this month to potentially be exhibited more frequently.

"The Joyous Banquet of Guo Ziyi” is a style of painting that became particularly popular in the late Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). It depicts the later years of the life of Guo Ziyi (697-781), enjoying a banquet with dozens of his family members. Guo, who was the prince of Fenyang, lived a long and prosperous life during the Tang Dynasty of China. He lived to the age of 85 and had eight sons and seven daughters. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Folklore, his life was described by saying, “Even when his power shook the world, there was no one in the royal court who disliked him, and even when his emptiness overshadowed the world, the emperor had no doubts.” Guo’s success as a military official, including the quelling of a rebellion, led him to be granted the title of Prince of Fenyang. He later came to be known as Guo Fenyang based on this title.

"The Joyous Banquet of Guo Ziyi,” a late-Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) painting in the collection at Grassi Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig, Germany, before undergoing conservation work. [OVERSEAS KOREAN CULTURAL HERITAGE FOUNDATION]

“He is considered an icon of worldly blessings since he was successful as a bureaucrat who enjoyed an extended and healthy life with many children,” Kim Jung-hee, chair of the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, said. “Such paintings were produced and displayed by both the royal court and the commoners of Joseon to express their wish for wealth and prosperity.”

The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, which has been operating the conservation and utilization support program, said it decided to bring the painting back to Korea for conservation as it was significantly damaged. The painting used to be on an eight-panel folding screen; however, the wooden frame eventually warped and the images had to be removed from it. The German museum had kept it as eight separate paintings.

“In 2022, we selected the painting as our next conservation project so that it could be remounted onto an eight-panel folding screen again and be exhibited more frequently overseas,” Kim said. The foundation works not only to retrieve cultural heritages of Korea that are kept overseas, but also to make sure that they are in good condition so they can come out of museum storage and be put on display more often.

The German museum is said to have purchased the folding screen from the German art dealer H. Sänger and added it to its collection in 1902. A total of 37 pieces of these late-Joseon paintings are said to have survived until today.

Park Ji-sun, head of Jung-Jae Conservation Center, said the painting from the Grassi Museum is of high quality, showing compositional similarities to other surviving examples.

According to Park, the most difficult part of the conservation process was not taking off the pieces of paper that were affixed to the painting, which requires very delicate handling, but deciding on what type of folding screen to use for the restored product.

“Deciding the size, especially the height, was difficult. We had to do a lot of research to make sure we created the folding screen as close to its original because we weren’t given any information on what it would’ve looked like,” Park said. “We were lucky to have worked on two other 'The Joyous Banquet of Guo Ziyi' pieces that are in the Spencer Museum of Art in Kansas and the Art Institute of Chicago’s collections. The Grassi museum’s painting showed compositional similarities to the other two.”

The folding screen is about 400 centimeters (13.1 feet) wide and 132 centimeters tall. The first three panels depict domestic scenes, mostly of women and young children playing outside. The fourth through sixth panels feature a banquet, and the seventh and eighth panels portray a pond and pavilion.

The Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation supports the conservation of Korean cultural heritages located outside the country. Since 2013, it has successfully restored 53 works in the collections of 31 institutions across 10 countries.

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [yim.seunghye@joongang.co.kr]