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Hawk at Sunrise

Jeong Hong-rae, late 18th–early 19th century. Korea, Joseon dynasty.

You are here

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A brown hawk perches on a craggy rock above swirling waves, with a red sun rising in the sky behind it.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

A hawk stands on a rock above churning waves, and a red sun is rising behind it. The bird is alert. Its head is turned and its talons grip the stone, and the brown feathers are painted with careful, overlapping strokes. Jeong Hong-rae was known in his time for paintings of hawks, and images of a hawk with the rising sun were popular in late Joseon Korea, where they were seen as signs of vigilance and good fortune. The composition is very simple: sky, sun, rock, sea, bird. That simplicity makes the hawk’s stillness seem all the more intense, as if it were the only thing awake.

Look closely

  1. Find the red sun. Where is it placed relative to the bird?
  2. Look at the talons. How firmly are they holding on?
  3. Look at the waves. How did the painter make them curl?

While you sit

The sun is just up and the hawk is already watching. You don’t need to watch for anything.

Your seat in the galleries: a dark slate bench on a rock-like base, with a round red disc set into one end.

About the work

Title
Hawk at Sunrise
Artist
Jeong Hong-rae
Date
late 18th–early 19th century
From
Korea, Joseon dynasty
Medium
Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
Size
Image: 44 1/2 × 23 1/2 in. (113 × 59.7 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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