Abstract

The album entitled Yeonhaengsihwacheop was produced based on the visits of Hong Gyeong-mo (sobriquet: Gwanam, 1774~1851), a member of a powerful Seoul family, as an envoy to Beijing in 1830 and 1834, during the late Joseon period. This album is being introduced to the public for the first time through this article. It contains approximately 20 poems and 36 paintings on the theme of landscapes and historical places along the path from Seoul to Beijing. Unlike other previously known paintings of diplomatic journeys to Beijing that feature only elements from voyages within China, Yeonhaengsihwacheop also includes selections from travels within Korea. This album bears a painter’s signature, which reads “Munjae.” The painter, whose background remains unknown, employed diverse painting styles developed in the eighteenth century, including real scenery landscape painting, genre painting, and architectural painting. While the painter had no personal experience visiting Beijing, he is presumed to have consulted the poems of Hong Gyeong-mo about his journeys to the city and other related items as source materials for the paintings. Hong commissioned the production of Yeonhaengsihwacheop in his seventies as part of the process of compiling his collected writings to pass them down to his descendants. Yeonhaengsihwacheop can be considered a visual documentary of the diplomatic journeys to Beijing. The production of this visual representation was affected by the expansion of the range of information collected by the literati and intellectuals through diplomatic journeys to Beijing in the nineteenth century. Moreover, Hong Gyeong-mo’s sense of family and his personal inclination toward obsessive documentation appears to have inspired the production of Yeonhaengsihwacheop.