An Gyeon’s Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land
Also called: Mongyu dowondo
An Gyeon painted in three days the peach-blossom paradise Prince Anpyeong saw in a dream — a monumental landscape leading from the real world into paradise, masterpiece of early Joseon painting.
Ahn Gyeon · Public domain · Source
In the fourth lunar month of 1447, Prince Anpyeong, Sejong’s third son, dreamt he wandered with Bak Paeng-nyeon and others through a land of peach blossoms. Hearing of it, the court painter An Gyeon finished the painting in three days. Unusually, the story runs from the real world at lower left to the paradise at upper right, with fantastic rocky peaks and wide peach orchards. The style builds on that of the Northern Song painter Guo Xi.
The prince’s title and colophon and poems by some twenty literati, including Sin Suk-ju, Bak Paeng-nyeon and Seong Sam-mun, are mounted with it — a union of poetry, calligraphy and painting. It is now in the Tenri University Central Library, Japan.
