Sukjodo (Painting of Sleeping Birds)
Kim Hongdo
light coloring in Indian ink on paper
Late Joseon dynasty
33.5cm x 24cm

Kim Hongdo(1745~1806(?)) was highly reputed as the best painter in the national painting office during the reign of King Jung Jo. He showed fantastic artistry in every field, including landscape, portrait, genre painting, and painting of flowers and birds. This painting shows two birds sleeping on the branch of frosted cold tree with theirs heads deep inside the feathers at night with a bright moon. Lightly-colored paintings of flowers and birds with composition of diagonally-cut branches, a typical Kim Hondo style, and the e-x-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n of branches that modified the method of expressing branches by bundle are similar to Danwonbub, that appeared when he was fifty years old and was named after his pen name, but the excessive branches made it too complex.