Painting of Big Bamboos

Kim Kyujin(1868~1933) is a representative painter and calligrapher who painted four gracious plants in the early modern period of Korea. He was especially famous for a China-ink painting that depicted bamboos. His expertise was in the various kinds of bamboo painting, and among them the big bamboo painting, called Tongjuk or Wangjuk was most famous. His painting style in big bamboo painting was individualized based on the painting style of Yangjupalga(eight painters from Yangju region in China) that includes Jungsup, and the big gap between two trees were mostly expressed by cutting off upper and lower body or cutting off only upper body. This work used the latter style, and with its delicate shading of the thick bamboo branches, dark and thin ink lines that describe bamboo joints, the arrangement of bamboos that becomes broader as it goes to the upper part, and the forms of leaves with relatively blunt ends, it is assumed as the works of the 1920s.