Painting of the Buddhas of the Three Ages at Taedunsa Temple, Haenam, Commissioned by Consort Sunbi Ŏm: A Collaborative Work by Itinerant Monk-painters

This paper demonstrates that the Painting of the Buddhas of the Three Ages (Samsebul-t'aeng), produced in 1901 for Taedunsa Temple in Haenam, is a collaborative work by monk-painters whose participation was orchestrated through the patronage of Consort Sunbi Ŏm (1854–1911). Although the work appears visually unified, it is in fact composed of three separate hanging scrolls, each executed by a different workshop led respectively by Kyŏngsŏn Ŭngsŏk (active mid-19th to early 20th century), Sŏgong Ch'ŏryu (1851–1917), and Yeun Sanggyu (active late 19th to 20th century).The tripartite format was necessitated by the scale of the rear altar wall of the temple’s Taeungbojŏn Hall, and its realization required close coordination among the participating monk-painters. Within this collaborative process, Sanggyu adapted Ŭngsŏk’s Bhaiṣajyaguru Painting to produce the Amitābha Painting, while Ch'ŏryu, through artistic exchange with Ŭngsŏk, introduced for the first time a winnowingbasket- shaped halo into his Śākyamuni Painting.Multiple sources substantiate Consort Ŏm’s role as the principal donor, including her dedicatory prayer text, a memorial tablet bearing the title “Sunbi” in Taedunsa’s Sweet Dew Painting (Kamnot'aeng), records of visits by Court Lady Yun Sanggung, and oral accounts related to the monk Yukpong Pŏphan (1867–1944). While Consort Ŏm had previously sponsored Buddhist paintings primarily in the capital region, in this instance she dispatched monk-painters with whom she had established ties to Haenam. The three workshops that convened there divided the production by scroll while jointly realizing a unified iconographic program. In this regard, Painting of the Buddhas of the Three Ages at Daedeunsa stands as a significant example of late Chosŏn Buddhist painting in which multiple monk-painter lineages collaborated under patron’s commission to produce a visually coherent altar ensemble.