Painting: Cockerel (Munbae-Do)
date: label: Accession Date
content: 24 Feb 1886
name: label: Donor Name
content: Ensign U S N John B. Bernadou
notes: label: Notes
content: From card [for all 12 paintings, E77052-0 through E77052-11]: "12 Glue-color folk paintings on paper, used for room decoration or storeroom door amulets. - Chang-su Houchins. See pp. 468-9 in "The Bernadou, Allen, and Jouy Korean Collections in the U.S. National Museum" by Walter Hough in USNM AR 1891. All 12 paintings are described there."
label: Notes
content: From card [for E77052-5], painting original # 6: "Yi period (1391 - 1910) talismanic painting of heavenly cock (ch' on' gyedo) standing on one leg in watchful pose, used on gates to safeguard the home. Woodblock print colored with glue paint. 13.5 x 11.25 in. Smithsonian Photographic Services negative number 73-11093, which is available as a black and white image or color slide under this same negative number."
label: Notes
content: "Late 19th century. Color woodcut. This rainbow-tailed rooster, standing on one leg hung on a gate or door to safeguard a home. The cockerel's pose suggests watchfulness to drive away evil spirits when he crows at dawn. Stylized bamboo leaves and pine branches serve as minor design elements. Use of five primary colors, blue or green, red, black, white and yellow, is the Korean adaptation of the Chinese concept of five elements or primary substances (water, fire, wood, meta] and earth). The numeral five is felicitous and use of the quantity of five is common throughout East Asia. Hough refers to this painting as one of four in the collection of "watchful animals." He adds: "One of the four pictures such as are found hanging on the outside of the storeroom in the dwellings of the common people." According to twentieth-century scholarship on Korean folk painting, the four Bernadou munbae-do were first introduced by the Emille Museum in "Geonchuk gwa hoehwa (Jo, 1974a: 49-51). Collected in Seoul. Ref: Hough Korean Catalog p. 46 ; Exhibited, Brooklyn Museum, "From the Land of Morning Calm: Korean Art at the Brooklyn Museum," October 16, 1987January 8, 1988. Published (Jo, 1974a: 51); (Moes, 1983: 87 and 116); "MBM 'Miguk bangmul-gwan sojang Hanguk munhwajae' or The Korean Relics in the United States", 1989: 148." [from: "An Ethnography of the Hermit Kingdom: The J.B. Bernadou Korean Collection 1884-1885", Chang-su Cho Houchins, 2004, number 124]
label: Record Last Modified
content: 14 Mar 2024
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Seoul, South Korea, Asia
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 016970
label: USNM Number
content: E77052-5
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Painting
physicalDescription: label: Height
content: 34.5 cm
label: Width
content: 29 cm