Need help with art

• Need help identifying / translating vintage Korean painting - Danwon signature?

• Message Details:Hi everyone,I'm hoping to get some insight on this artwork. It is a traditional Korean folk painting showing a village scene with people in traditional dress (Hanbok and black Gat hats) in front of a mountain landscape.It is ink and color wash on traditional paper, mounted flat onto a thick cardboard backing. It has columns of calligraphic writing and red artist stamps in the top left corner that appear to read "Danwon" (檀園).I'd appreciate any insights you have on the text translation, the artist attribution, or its likely age. Thank you

 

You can run the characters through Google Translate. You'll need better quality photographs, however.

Debora

 

Hi Tracy, welcome. Photos didn't come through for me either, so a few general things that might help while you re-attach.

Danwon (檀園) is the art name of Kim Hong-do, the big 18th century genre painter. His village and everyday life scenes were copied a huge amount, so most pieces with his name on them turn out to be later copies or 20th century decorative work. Mounted flat onto card rather than a scroll or album mount also points that way, though it doesn't rule anything out.

Worth checking:
- Look at the paint and the red seals under a loupe or phone macro. A regular dot pattern means a print. Real ink bleeds a little into the paper fibers, and real seal paste sits slightly raised and uneven.
- The National Museum of Korea has his genre painting album online. If your scene matches one of those compositions closely it's a copy after him.
- Post a sharp straight-on photo of just the writing column. There is sometimes a cyclical date in there (two characters like 丙辰) that someone here can read, and that helps with age more than the signature does.