[KS] Kim and Washington

Frank Hoffmann hoffmann at koreaweb.ws
Fri Oct 8 13:12:09 EDT 2010


Dear George, dear List:

George, your posting below greatly confuses me ... as it is 
completely irrelevant to the discussion we had, and because I did 
never in any way discuss the image you mention AT ALL.

1.
In my first response to your posting of the two then unidentified 
images that you posted I was referring to Edward Hicks (1870-1849) 
and I re-posted your image and 4 others by Hicks in that response ... 
image in the List Archives here:
http://koreaweb.ws/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreaweb.ws/attachments/20101003/7ba0d23c/attachment-0001.jpg
I referred to yet another Hicks version at the Chrysler Museum, 
simply because the ONLINE version was nicely large, so one would be 
able to actually discuss it:
http://www.chrysler.org/education/unit1/unit1_images/hicks_washington.77.1271.jpg
To repeat and summarize, in that first response I made my point by 
arguing that it makes little sense (from an art historical point of 
view) to compare paintings 150 or so years apart, and to base such a 
comparison of such a general subject matter as "leaders on horses" 
(all the details did differ, e.g. no battle scene in the Kim & Kim 
painting, no family in the Washington battle scene, etc.). I pointed 
out that the ONLY similarity, execpt for the "leader on horse" theme, 
might be the treatment of colors and backgrounds between Kim & Kim 
painting and the Hicks painting, but also pointed out a little about 
the history of how the North Korean artists ended up with that.

2.
In my second mail I agreed with you that I had wrongly assumed your 
posted (more famous) painting was one of the many Hicks 
reinterpretations. It was by Sully himself, indeed. And I did EXPLAIN 
why I ended up with that mixup.
I did at no point discuss the painting in my 2nd posting -- that was 
a quote from the website given in that posting, and was ONLY put 
there as an explanation of the mentioned confusion of attribution to 
Hicks. I understand this is confusing, but please re-read more 
carefully and you see what I mean.

3. The issue as regards to attribution to Hicks / Sully / Bingham 
does in no way whatsoever make a difference for the general 
statements as regards to comparing 150 or 170 years apart paintings 
from Korea and the U.S.


So far as a further clarification.


Best regards,
Frank




>Dear Frank,
>
>The painting you posted, "Washington Crossing the Delaware," is by George
>Caleb Bingham, not Sully, and belongs to the collection of the Chrysler
>Museum in Norfolk, Virginia--not Boston's MFA.
>
>Bingham's piece is quite different than Sully's ("The Passage of the
>Delaware)". In the latter, the juxtaposition of the horse and rider against
>the landscape below as well as the waving hand of the "father's" nearby
>companion are salient aspects of its formal similarity to the Korean piece
>and are not shared by Bingham's portrayal.
>
>George

-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws




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