[Gallery Walk] The Hands That Wore Down Ten Inkstones: The People Behind the Chusa Style

"Chusa Kim Jeonghui and His Companions" at the National Museum of Korea
Revisiting Kim Jeonghui through Letters, Epigraphy, Buddhism, and Exchanges with Qing Literati
From "Buliseonrando" to Newly Unveiled Works: 38 Pieces Mapping the Knowledge

On the morning of August 10th, in the Calligraphy and Painting Room of the National Museum of Korea, people formed a semicircle in front of a single small orchid. This is “Buliseonrando,” a national treasure by Chusa Kim Jeonghui. A few thin orchid leaves are painted loosely, with a vast area left blank. But when you get closer, you notice there are more words than strokes. Chusa wrote four inscriptions around the painting: a confession that he painted an orchid after 20 years, an explanation that it was done in a mix of cursive and clerical script, and even a personal story about how he meant to give it to his ink-grinding assistant Daljun, but a disciple, Oh Gyuil, recognized and tried to take it. Even Chusa's masterpiece, which appears born in solitude, already bears traces of several people.

On the 10th, attendees are viewing "Buliseonrando" at the exhibition briefing titled "Chusa Kim Jeonghui and His Companions" held at the Calligraphy and Painting Hall of the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News.

The most intriguing aspect of this year’s third thematic exhibition, "Chusa Kim Jeonghui and His Companions," opening on August 11th in the Calligraphy and Painting Room, is right here. This is not just another exhibition declaring Chusa a genius. Rather, it asks: whom did this genius meet, from whom did he learn, with whom did he argue, and to whom did he offer calligraphy and paintings?

The exhibition presents 38 works—comprising 31 pieces of letters, calligraphy, paintings, and rubbings—that trace four threads of his life: epigraphy, arts and letters, and Buddhism. Of these, six works are being unveiled for the first time. Yoo Hongjun, director of the National Museum of Korea, said with a smile, “Chusa truly is difficult.” His point is that it is hard to explain someone who was at once a calligrapher, epigrapher, classical scholar, and literary master with just a handful of works.

Surprisingly, the easiest way to encounter that difficult Chusa is through his letters. In them, he grumbles about not hearing from his wife as often as he’d like, and he confesses his sorrow over his inability to attend his departed sister’s funeral. One letter—being released to the public for the first time—was sent in 1819 from Chusa to a military official in Hwanghae-do: he shares the good news of his father Kim Nokyeong’s appointment as Minister of Rites and of his own success in the state examinations, all while maintaining humility. The museum notes that his handwriting during this period resembled that of his father, Kim Nokyeong, showing that even someone who would later create the unique “Chusa-che” style once did not have a calligraphic identity of his own.

The National Museum of Korea announced on the 10th that it will hold its third thematic exhibition, "Chusa Kim Jeonghui and His Companions," in the Calligraphy and Painting Room on the 11th. The photo shows "Landscape Painting in the Style of Yuan Painter Yechan," painted by Heo Ryeon (1808–1893) in the style of Yuan dynasty painter Yechan. Photo by Yonhap News Agency, National Museum of Korea

If you trace the development of Chusa’s script, you realize his study was not a mere room in Hanyang (old Seoul). At 24, he followed his father to Qing China, where he met Ong Bang-gang and Wan Yuan, maintaining scholarly exchanges even after returning home. In the fields of Gyeongju, he searched for ancient stone monuments with friends, and in his place of exile in Bukcheong, he discovered stone arrowheads and compared them to literature. He sent his findings to Qing scholars for their opinions. In today’s terms, his laboratory was a distributed network—spread across Beijing, Gyeongju, Jeju, and Bukcheong. Some scholars say the pivotal achievements of Kim Jeonghui's academic work originated from this extensive human network and exchange of data.

A small stone fragment in one corner of the exhibition gallery encapsulates this point: “Inscription Stone for Amitabha Buddha at Mujangsa Temple.” In 1817, Chusa found a broken piece of stele while pushing through weeds in Gyeongju. On one side, he recorded not only the circumstances of the find but also his sadness that he could not share the joy with his late Qing friend, Ong Sugon. Alongside the scholarly record of studying the stone remained his feelings of longing for a friend. Even in the cool discipline of epigraphy, there was a human warmth.

Yoo Hongjun, director of the National Museum of Korea, is giving an explanation at the exhibition briefing titled "Chusa Kim Jeonghui and His Companion" held on the 10th in the Calligraphy and Painting Room of the National Museum of Korea in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo by Yonhap News

The newly unveiled “Small Pavilion Under the Pines” is even more fascinating. Painted by Qing literati Zhu Xuanian, it features inscriptional comments by Ong Bang-gang, Wan Yuan, and other Qing scholars with whom Kim Jeonghui interacted. In a single artwork, multiple hands and perspectives overlap. After acquisition by the museum in 2023, it is being revealed for the first time. Also on display for the first time since their acquisition from the Lee Kun-hee bequest are “Landscape Painting in the Style of Yuan Painter Yechan” by Chusa’s disciple Heo Ryeon, and “Album of Ink Orchid Paintings” by Yi Haeung, the man who would later become Heungseon Daewongun. The spread of Qing artistic and literary culture, adopted by Chusa, to his disciples, and its transformation into a new current within the Joseon art world in the late 19th century, unfolds in a single exhibition hall.

Chusa’s network extended beyond the literati. He shared tea and Buddhism with the monk Choui. In a letter to Choui, now held by the museum, he laments about humidity and endemic diseases during his exile on Jeju Island, requests tea and jang (Korean sauce), and in another letter, even asks philosophical questions on Seon Buddhism. The man who asked simply for a packet of tea writes elsewhere about Buddhist philosophy. For him, scholarship and daily life were not separate spheres.

However, if you were to interpret “Companions” in the exhibition title as simply a tale of beautiful friendship, you would miss half of Chusa. He belonged to one of the preeminent families of his time; accompanying his father on official missions to Qing China, he was able to meet the highest scholars in person. His network was not a flat, egalitarian community by today’s standards. Between teachers and disciples, senior officials and artisan-class artists, aristocrats and monks, there were strict boundaries of status and power.

The National Museum of Korea announced on the 10th that it will hold the third thematic exhibition titled "Chusa Kim Jeonghui and His Companions," which will be showcased in the Calligraphy and Painting Gallery on the 11th. The photo shows "Small Pavilion Under the Pines" painted by the Qing Dynasty literati Zhu Xuanian (1760–1834), with appreciation inscriptions left by Ong Bang-gang and Wan Yuan. National Museum of Korea Yonhap News Agency

This is what makes it all the more fascinating. Even a genius does not emerge spontaneously, without channels provided by the era. Chusa had privileged access as a member of a distinguished family, but at the same time, he kept widening his network—linking Qing scholarship, Joseon epigraphy, Buddhism through monks, and the arts of commoners and disciples. His originality lay not so much in inventing something from nothing as in the ability to weave together the old and the new, the familiar and the foreign, and people from different regions and classes in his own way. The museum explains the concept of “Entry into the Ancient, Emergence with the New”—to enter the old and emerge with something new—as quintessentially that process.

When you revisit “Buliseonrando” at the end, the orchid starts to look different. Though Chusa boasted that it was “one of a kind in the world,” that single piece is surrounded by the boy who ground his ink, the disciple who coveted the painting, and a throng of ancient scripts and Buddhist language he mastered. The work that seemed like the solitary masterpiece of a genius turns out, in fact, to be the culmination of a lifetime's dialogue.

Chusa once wrote to Kwon Donin, “Over seventy years I wore down ten inkstones, and used up a thousand brushes.” He probably ground the inkstones alone. But the sentences he wrote with those brushes—those came from people.

The exhibition runs until November 22. “Buliseonrando” will only be shown until September 13 for preservation purposes, after which it will be replaced by “Hamhchugak Haengseo Dalian.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.