Ch'aekkŏri Paintings: A Korean Jigsaw Puzzle

Ch'aekkŏri Paintings: A Korean Jigsaw PuzzleAuthor(s): Kay E. Black and Edward W. WagnerSource: Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 46 (1993), pp. 63-75Published by: University of Hawai'i Press for the Asia SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20111228 .

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Ch'aekk?ri Paintings: A Korean Jigsaw Puzzle

Kay E. Black and Edward W. Wagner

Denver Art Museum Harvard University

V^h'aekk?ri are Korean still life paintings that were used

for interior decoration, often on folding screens, during the latter part of the Chos?n period (1392-19io).1 The

genesis of the word ch'aekk?ri is not clear, but it has been

in general use for some time. Ch}aek is the Korean pro nunciation for the Chinese character meaning "book."

K?ri is a bound Korean word having the nuance of "the

makings of, material for. "

The combined word is a tech

nical fine-arts term defined as "a painting of books and

appurtenances," or, more simply, "books and things."2 There has been the long-held belief that all ch'aekk?ri

painting was produced by anonymous folk artists. We

have discovered otherwise, by studying four ch'aekk?ri

paintings and determining who painted them. These

four paintings were the first ones found to bear the artist's own seal. However, one of the two different names on

these seals was that of a known, but obscure, painter, while the other name was entirely unattested. This article

tells the story of how we did our detective work and

what enabled us to put in place some of the pieces in the

"ch'aekk?ri jigsaw puzzle," focusing on an unpublished

painting in the collection of Columbia University. The sources for our study were the paintings them

selves, Korean genealogies of the so-called "middle

people" (chungin), other lineage documents, and lists of

those who passed the various chapkwa or "miscellane

ous" examinations, those taken preponderantly by members of the chungin class. Over 150 ch'aekk?ri

examples have been discovered during a 15-year search.

Rarely seen on exhibition, these paintings have been un

covered in museum storage, private collections, auction

houses, and at art dealers in Korea, Japan, Europe, and

the United States. Some have been published, usually the same ones over and over again. But subsequent inves

tigation of those published has shown that the accom

panying textual information usually was either incom

plete or misleading. The paintings were executed in mineral and vegetable

colors bound with glue, sometimes with a touch of

monochrome ink painted on silk or paper. The format was a six-, eight-, or ten-panel folding screen. Because so many Chos?n period folding screens have survived?

evidence that they comprised an integral part of house

hold furnishings?one must accept that their household

function dictated their multipaneled folding format.

Typical ch'aekk?ri show an assemblage of scholarly

paraphernalia such as books, bronzes, flower arrange ments, bowls of fruit, and miniature landscapes, which were considered appropriate belongings for a Confucian

scholar's study of the period. Invariably included are

"The Four Friends of the Scholar"?paper, ink, brush, and ink stone. All these objects are drawn from secular sources but some carry religious connotations by their

association with Buddhism and Taoism. Many of the

bronze vessels depicted are those which were specifically associated with the Confucian ancestor worship ritual

during the Chos?n period. Three distinct types of ch'aekk?ri screen painting have

emerged in the course of our study, and have been labeled

"isolated," "table," and "trompe l'oeil." All three types share a common theme, Chinese in derivation, and a

common screen format. Ch'aekk?ri of the isolated vari

ety (Figs, i and 2) show the subject matter strewn some

what randomly in vertical columns on each panel of a

screen. The integrity of a panel does not depend on its

adjacent panels, but each stands as an isolated composi tion. The scholarly paraphernalia, such as books, and

"The Four Friends of the Scholar" depicted singly and

in small groups, appear as objects floating in space on the

panels of the screen without visible means of support or

coherent ordering. Pictorial effect is achieved through the use of color, differences in scale, some overlapping of the objects, and by the empty spaces surrounding them. The only Western influence visible in the isolated

type of ch'aekk?ri is that seen in the shading used to

model the contours of the objects portrayed. The table type of ch'aekk?ri screen painting (Figs. 3

and 4) provides by far the most numerous examples for

study and is certainly the most complicated in all its

aspects. Tables or other pieces of Korean furniture are

always incorporated in the theme. Different kinds of

perspective, East Asian and European, are combined to create compositions of intermingled and integrated

shapes on each panel. The resulting still life arrangements

appear as unified architectonic constructions, owing to

their alignment and to the transitions from one plane to

another. A greater range of subject matter, including such items as clothing, scientific apparatus, and specta cles is added to the objects that fill the table screens.

Trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri (Fig. 5) provide Korean art

ists with the ideal way to exploit the Renaissance system of linear perspective. The trompe l'oeil technique takes

63



Figs, i and 2. Han ?ng-suk. Eight-panel ch'aekk?ri screen, isolated variety, ink and mineral pigments on silk, each panel (painting only) h.

133.0, w. 54.5 cm. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Minn Pyong Yoo, Seoul, Korea. Photograph by Norman Sibley.

Figs. 3 and 4. Anonymous, ca. 1830. Pair of four-panel ch'aekk?ri screens, table variety, ink and mineral pigments on paper, paintings only, H.70.5, w. 31.5 cm. United States private collection. Photograph by Lightworks.

Fig. 5. Yi ?ng-nok, ca. 1840. Eight-panel

ch'aekk?ri screen, trompe l'oeil variety, ink

and mineral pigments on paper, h. 1.63, l.

2.76 m. C. V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University, New York City.

Photograph by Norman Sibley.

64



its name, by which it is known throughout the Western

world, from the French words meaning "trick of the

eye. "

Through the combined use of linear perspective and a careful manipulation of color value on a two-di

mensional surface, a three-dimensional visual effect is

achieved. The pictorial creation of a folding screen that looks like a bookcase full of scholarly treasures provides the perfect geometric framework for the Korean artist's

application of the newly acquired system of artificial

perspective. A trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri creates an illu sion. Thus make-believe bookcases are pictorially cre

ated to serve as a display case for the make-believe trea sures of the scholar in an overall composition across the

many panels of a screen.

These ch'aekk?ri bookcase designs are possibly drawn

from Chos?n period examples used in book storage rooms or are derived from a mix of period pieces of

furniture called t'akcha, which are shelves, often open sided, for books and porcelain.3 Ingenious Korean artists

designed pictures of gigantic bookcases, all joined hori

zontally to achieve the symmetrical or balanced con

struction that they envisioned. The artists mixed and

matched from the various styles of Korean display stands familiar to them in order to suit their respective tastes in

imaginary furniture for their paintings. Thus far no two

bookcases depicted in trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri screens

have been found to be identical.

Korean artists did a curious thing when they produced trompe l'oeil still-life paintings on folding screens. They combined elements of both Western and East Asian per

spective into one style of screen, by revealing five sur

faces of an interior space, in the Western style, and by

using multiple vanishing points and isometric perspec tive to depict book stacks, in the East Asian tradition. In

East Asian perspective there were multiple vantage or

station points, in contrast to the single one characteristic of the European method. In painting trompe l'oeil

ch'aekk?ri, Korean artists were attracted to the pictorial innovation of showing the five interior surfaces of a

bookcase or curio-cabinet?floor, ceiling, back, and sides ?in the Western manner instead of depicting only three of its interior surfaces as was possible in the East Asian

tradition (see Figs. 5 and io).4 Strangely enough, these ch'aekk?ri painters were the only Korean artists who

exploited the perspective system in this manner.

This article will focus on four examples of trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri. The first of these was discovered hidden in a subterranean chamber at Columbia University's C.

V. Starr East Asian Library in New York City (see Fig. 5).5 The painting is a superb example of the trompe l'oeil

genre. One item of its subject matter is an artist's seal, which makes possible a significant breakthrough in one

aspect of the study of ch'aekk?ri: the artist's name is

revealed. The seal is displayed with its characters facing the viewer, in the upright position on top of a seal box on

the highest shelf of the fifth panel from the left. Korean artists traditionally inscribed their signatures and/or im

pressed their seals upon their paintings as the Chinese did. But the appearance of the actual artist's seal, not its

imprint, on the painting would seem to be an innovation

limited in Korea to the ch'aekk?ri genre. Yi ?ng-noka is

the name of the artist found on the seal in the Columbia screen (Fig. 6a). Another trompe l'oeil style ch'aekk?ri in the National Museum of Korea in Seoul, also bears his seal (Fig. 6b).6 Thus two ch'aekk?ri screens, both of the same type, bear seals identifying the artist as Yi ?ng

nok.

Seals are very important in East Asian culture. Confu cian scholars of the Chos?n period practiced calligraphy,

wrote poetry, and carved seals just as their Chinese coun

terparts had done for centuries. Amateur artists and pro fessional painters alike owned many personal seals, seals carved with their real names, their "courtesy names," their pen names, names of their studios, as well as other

names or terms which might identify them. Personal seals in a sense were status symbols, and from a legal

point of view they clearly performed a vital function in the validation of documents. It is only natural, therefore, that Korean painters should "sign" their work by im

printing upon it one of their personal seals. But this is not the case with ch'aekk?ri painters. Trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri artists were innovative?they painted into

their works one or more seals, not imprints, by which

they might be identified. Indeed, the ch'aekk?ri's theme

Fig. 6. a, Seal of Yi ?ng-nok found on Columbia University screen (Fig. 5), photograph by Norman Sibley; b, seal of Yi ?ng nok found on National Museum of Korea screen (Fig. 9); c, seal

of Yi Hy?ng-nok found on Ho-Am Art Museum screen (Fig. 7),

courtesy of Ho-Am Art Museum; D (left) seal of Yi Hy?ng-nok,

(right) seal of "man of Wansan"; both seals found on Seoul Private Collection screen (Fig. 8); photographs by the authors.

65



Fig. 7. Yi Hy?ng-nok, ca. i860. Eight-panel ch'aekk?ri screen, trompe l'oeil variety, ink and mineral pigments on paper, h. 1.40, l. 4.68 m.

Ho-Am Art Museum, Yongin, Ky?nggi-do, Korea. Photograph courtesy of Ho-Am Art Museum.

itself provides the perfect context for an artist to cleverly reveal his name in this way.7

The next major discovery was two more trompe l'oeil

ch'aekk?ri screens, very similar to those of Yi ?ng-nok, but with a different name, Yi Hy?ng-nok,b revealed on

their seals. One was an eight-panel screen found at the

Ho-Am Art Museum near Seoul with a seal bearing Yi

Hy?ng-nok's name again depicted as part of the subject matter (Fig. 7; see also Fig. 6c).8 The other was again an

eight-panel screen (but missing two of what must have

been originally ten panels) in a private collection in Seoul, which has two seals carved in the same style script but on differently shaped stones (Fig. 8).9 Yi Hy?ng-nok's name is given on one, and the other reads "man of Wan

san,c" which identifies the place of origin of the lineage of which Yi Hy?ng-nok was a member (see Figs. 6d, left and right). Initially, then, four ch'aekk?ri screen

paintings were identified as the work of Yi Ung-nok and

Yi Hy?ng-nok. Subsequently two additional ch'aekk?ri screens by Yi Hy?ng-nok became known; these were of

the isolated type and in each the artist's seal was depicted as part of the subject matter.10 The discovery of the au

thorship of these paintings by Yi ?ng-nok and Yi

Hy?ng-nok, six altogether, invalidates the long-held be

lief that all ch'aekk?ri were anonymously painted. How

ever, the discovery of these screens with seals gave rise to new problems in the ch'aekk?ri puzzle.

Since Yi ?ng-nok and Yi Hy?ng-nok (hereinafter called simply Hy?ng-nok and ?ng-nok) each painted at least two screens of the trompe l'oeil type, which were

very similar in their formal aspects and which had seals

carved in the same style of ancient seal script, it is likely there was an important connection between the two

men. Naturally it was necessary to discover if they were

related, but the evidence was at first inconclusive. Since

the second character of their given names was identical

it was possible, perhaps even likely, that the two men

were brothers or cousins belonging to the same sub

lineage. Unfortunately, no record could be found of a

painter named Yi ?ng-nok, the two trompe l'oeil

ch'aekk?ri screens being his only known link to the

painting world. On the other hand, Yi Hy?ng-nok is

recorded in the standard reference works as a court

painter (hwaw?n) who was known for his bookshelf

paintings, and who at some point changed his name

from Hy?ng-nok to T'aek-kyun.du His birth date of

1808, his courtesy name (cha) Y?t'onge and his pen name

(ho) Songsokf are also given.12 One recent source further

notes that the Ch?nju Yi lineage to which he belonged included six close kinsmen who also were court paint ers.13 Additional information tells us that he reached the

position of Chich'ung,8 an abbreviation for a high rank

ing position in the Office of Ministers-without-Portfolio

(Chungch'uw?nh). This position carried Senior Second

Rank, which apparently was within the reach of quite a

number of chungin painters.14 Finally, the piece of evi

dence that securely ties the Yi Hy?ng-nok of record to

the Yi Hy?ng-nok who painted one of our ch'aekk?ri

screens, the private collection example, is its second seal

identifying him as a "man of Wansan," that is, of

Ch?nju. One of the very few chungin genealogies known to

have been published was that of an important chungin

sublineage of the royal Ch?nju Yi clan. This was fortuit

ous indeed, because it is to this particular Ch?nju Yi

sublineage that Yi Hy?ng-nok belongs. As can be seen

in Chart 1, there were six successive father-to-son gener ations of court painters in Yi Hy?ng-nok's direct line of

66



Fig. 8. Yi Hy?ng-nok, ca. 1850. Eight

panel (missing two) ch'aekk?ri screen,

trompe l'oeil variety, ink and mineral

pigments on paper, h. 1.63, l. 3.20 m.

Seoul Private Collection. Photograph

by the authors.

Chart 1. Yi Hy?ng-nok's Ch?nju Yi Chungin Lineage

^?t YiWi 1696-1756

S?ng-nin 1718-1777

I

Chong-han 1737-1800

?S Sfi 3dau. Kang-min Ky?ng-min

1760-1799 1776-1794

(no children) (did not marry)

Chong-uk 1746-1832

dau.

I

Chong-hy?n 1748-1803

?P

Chong-gtin 1750-1827

I

sgp its Yun-min Su-min

1774-1841 (->^fi)

2 dau.

Sun-min Su-min

1783-1839

3 dau.

Chae-gi /

Ch'ang-ok 1830-?

I

JS?p Tog-y?ng 1870-?

dau. m.

sonlS??P Paek ?n-bac

"H dau. m.

Kim Che-do

f. WM P Kim Hwa-jong

Chong-gyu 1760-1793

#_g P dau.

Hyo-min ?-?

(did not marry)

dau. ? ? p T'aeng-nok

1807-1845

?f* P ?i-rok

1822-1852

(did not marry)

4 dau.

ftje/f?f?p Chae-gy?ng/

Ky?ng-ok 1844-?

I

Tog-y?ng (adopted

dau. dau. m

?gf?P Paek Y?ng-bae

Paek Chun-hwan

Chae-ik

1828-?

3 dau.

I

Hl. S?ng-bong

1739-1787

Chong-tin 1769-1784

?R P Sun-min

1789-1831

dau.

Explanatory Notes:

Relationships and dates are from the clan genealogy: Chonju Yi-ssi chokpo (;^'Jt| $ft jj?Ih), Seoul?:

1858,7-40? ff., except that T?g-y?ng /I^k's year of birth is found in j^fcf?M 1?M MM1?, Seoul: National History Compiliation Committee, 1972, p.32T. The genealogy, however, makes no mention whatsoever of the artistic activities of those in the lineage who served as Court Painters (those marked with a bold-face "P"), nor does it record a pen name for any of them. Identification as Court Painters

H? has been taken from sources recording chungin lineage data and from the chapkwa pangmok (?E?4 $r ?), the rosters for the various "miscellaneous" government service examinations.

67



Fig. 9. Yi ?ng-nok, ca. 1840. Ten-panel

ch'aekk?ri screen, trompe l'oeil variety, ink

and mineral pigments on hemp, h. 1.53, l.

3.52 m. National Museum of Korea, Seoul.

descent from an early eighteenth-century apex figure, and fifteen altogether in these six generations (not includ

ing the husband of one of Yi Hy?ng-nok's sisters, the

son of a second sister, and one of his sons-in-law)?a

truly remarkable concentration of professional painters. But where is Yi ?ng-nok? Whose "extra" son might he

have been? Is he already listed in the family genealogy, but under another, changed name? Or, on the other

hand, was it possible that the four ch'aekk?ri screens

under study here were executed by one hand, not two?

At the outset, a case could be made either way. Indeed

the four screens are very similar, but enough differences

exist between ?ng-nok 's and Hy?ng-nok's paintings to

suggest either two different phases within the work of

one artist, or two artists with perhaps a close working

relationship. With the then prevalent practice of name

changing, it was necessary to consider the possibility that Hy?ng-nok and ?ng-nok were one and the same

person. To this end, a full stylistic analysis of the four

paintings had to be undertaken, in an attempt to find

another way to determine whether or not ?ng-nok and

Hy?ng-nok were in fact a single painter. Because ?ng-nok's Columbia ch'aekk?ri had been

remounted in Japan as eight separate hanging scrolls, it

was necessary to reassemble the paintings in the sequence the artist probably originally planned in screen format

before a comparison between it and the other three

ch'aekk?ri could be made. Since the National Museum

screen, still in its original mounting, also bears the Yi

?ng-nok seal, and is symmetrical in composition, sym

metry became a model for reconstruction. After ruling out the possibility that there were two panels missing, the panels were placed in their probable order. The key to determining the proper ordering of the panels lay in

selecting the innermost panels, the ones having the most

acute angles delineating the third dimension of the book case. Proceeding outward toward the wings, the angles become less and less acute. Since a significant number of

the trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri studied have been re

mounted in the wrong order, the above method is

suggested as a system for putting together other screens

currently misaligned.

?ng-nok's Columbia trompe l'oeil bookcase structure

is found to be asymmetrical but balanced, unlike the one

depicted on his National Museum screen in which the

left side is a mirror image of the right (Fig. 9). The bottom half of the two center panels is comprised of four

compartments, with the left side an upside-down version

of the right. The eye of the viewer is thus drawn to the

screen's central area. In his National Museum screen a

bank of four shelves and repeated L-shaped sections

formed by parallel stepped-down lines depicted on both

wings draw the eye away from the screen's center, so no

particular focus results. But in the bookcases of both

these screens there are complicated frontal planes because

of ?ng-nok's use of four tiers of shelves. By contrast, both of Hy?ng-nok's ch'aekk?ri have only three tiers of

shelves throughout, resulting in simplified frontal planes.

?ng-nok's Columbia screen and both of Hy?ng-nok's ch'aekk?ri have a central focus caused by the frontal

planes guiding the eye to the middle and by broad ex

panses of light color seen on the shelves and the ceilings of the central compartments. How ?ng-nok and

Hy?ng-nok created the illusion of space is important, and it is clear that in structure the bookshelves in both the

Columbia and National Museum paintings are more

complex than those in either of Hy?ng-nok's two com

positions. In most respects all four screens are painted in accor

dance with trompe l'oeil conventions. The scholarly treasures depicted are life-size and are arranged in a book case of believable proportions.15 The artists have suc

ceeded in conveying the illusion of three dimensions by

depicting the shelves' recession into space. This effect has

been created by the multiple vanishing points used

throughout the screens' middle ground. Five vanishing

points are used in the Columbia painting where three

would have sufficed (Diagram 1). In the other three

screens, all of which are much wider, an awareness of the

distortion problems caused by the extreme width of the

68



Fig. io. Anonymous. Eight-panel ch'aekk?ri screen, trompe l'oeil experimental variety, ink and mineral pigments on paper, h. 1.28, L. 4.48 m. Here, the artist's efforts to create an illusionistic bookcase have failed because he has painted parallel orthogonals instead of con

vergent ones. In clinging to the East Asian tradition of isometric perspective the artist has limited himself to the portrayal of only three

sides of each compartment of the bookcase because all the orthogonals recede in the same direction. Here an orthogonal is perceived as an

apparent acute angle, when it actually is a right angle, or a third plane, which runs perpendicular to the vertical and horizontal planes of the

bookcase shelves. The artist has tried to add a fourth side, in this instance a ceiling, to each compartment along the screen's top register. But

the lack of orthogonals at the top of the painting, and the extension of the vertical supports to that point, create not the look of an inte

grated ceiling, but that of a strip pasted on as a solution. Ho-Am Art Museum, Yongin, Ky?nggi-do, Korea. Photograph by Norman Sibley.

Diagram i. Perspective overlay of the Columbia University screen (Fig. 5), showing the five van

ishing points used by Yi ?ng-nok. These are indicated by horizontal V-shaped lines. (The two

overlapping V-shaped lines in the center probably represent one vanishing point.) Dotted lines

suggest the back floor lines of the book shelves wherever they are obscured by objects from the

viewer. All diagrams are by the authors.

bookcase and their shallow nature is demonstrated by the creation of six or eight vanishing points (Diagrams 2, 3, and 4). These are pulled outward from the center and are distributed rather evenly throughout the ch'aek k?ri's breadth. Otherwise, severe distortion would have

resulted at the screen's ends, and there would also have been no shelf space visible on the end shelves for the

objects. Thus multiple vanishing points were necessary to keep the orthogonals acute.16 Once these angles be

came oblique, the shelves' contents would have been

eclipsed by the sides of the shelves themselves. The evidence provided by the ch'aekk?ri paintings

demonstrates that their artists did comprehend that the

vantage point was immutable, one of the cardinal rules of linear perspective, but that nevertheless the shallow ness of the bookcase and its extreme width in proportion to height required them to use multiple station points, hence multiple vanishing points. The widest ch'aekk?ri,

69



Diagram 2. Perspective overlay of the

National Museum of Korea screen (Fig.

9) showing the six vanishing points used

by Yi ?ng-nok.


Seoul Private Collection screen (Fig. 8) showing five vanishing points used by

Yi Hy?ng-nok. A sixth vanishing point is presumed to have existed on

the missing two panels.


Ho-Am Art Museum screen (Fig. 7)

showing eight vanishing points used

by Yi Hy?ng-nok.

over fifteen feet?Hy?ng-nok's Ho-Am screen?has a

horizontal "flow," and the objects seem to be arranged in waves across the painting's surface. Various objects are

scattered along laterally, and piles of books are grouped in zones. The percentage of books to objects is greater

here than in the other three ch'aekk?ri. When other ob

jects are added they are compacted to present one outline.

This has the effect of simplifying the whole. In both the Columbia and National Museum screens

the palettes are rich and the handling of color contrasts

skillful and dramatic. By contrast, in both the Ho-Am

and private collector's paintings the colors seem bland

and the forms flat. The images are crisper and more

plastic in the Columbia painting. For example, both the

peach and the flower arrangement attract the eye of the

spectator by the way in which they glow against their

muted backgrounds. The still life compositions in the

Columbia ch'aekk?ri are more tightly organized and less

mannered than those in the private collector's and the Ho-Am paintings. Here it is apparent that Ung-nok has

70



taken great care in his still life arrangements by overlap

ping the objects in his groupings to show recession, whereas the objects in the other three ch'aekk?ri are

aligned horizontally. The paintings are certainly connected by the subject

matter depicted in every one: the narcissus, peacock feathers in a bronze vase, tree-root brush holder, bronze

incense burners and tools, club moss brush holder, mag nolia blossom specimen vase and the same style ink

stone. The same book cover patterns, including the

Seven Treasures pattern, are used repeatedly in each

ch'aekk?ri. But there are differences here, too. For exam

ple, ?ng-nok's details, such as book cover patterns, are

emphasized and are delineated by the "iron wire" line, a

show of calligraphic skill. In his Columbia painting a

blue brocade book cover with white roundels is cut off

at the edge, just where the natural fold-under point oc

curs. This kind of detail represents a very logical ap

proach, and differs from that seen in the Ho-Am and the

private collector's works. A t'ao t'ieh mask, which is

originally seen on Chinese bronzes during the Anyang

period (ca. thirteenth century-ca. 1027 b.c.) of the

Shang dynasty, is found depicted on the waist of a Ch'ing

dynasty version of an archaic bronze vase in the Colum

bia painting.17 But if such a design does appear on either

the Ho-Am or the private collector's screens, the lines

depicting it are too abstract to be recognizable as such.

By comparison, the relative reduction of detail makes

the Ho-Am trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri appear to represent a step further away from the real object. This trend away from realism can be seen in the shadows cast on the

interior sides of the bookcases in Hy?ng-nok's works, which are unnatural and unconvincing in their depiction.

Instead of shading the colors gradually, one to another, there are firm lines of demarcation. This is also true to a

lesser extent of the Columbia and National Museum

screens, but here the shading is softer and, while the

shadow itself is unnatural, it is more believable because

of the hazy effect. As has been shown above, everything about the Ho-Am work is looser and more schematized, thus farther removed from the conventional trompe l'oeil painting. Since the screens became wider and wider in relation to their height and the patterns of the frontal

planes became simpler, these two trends might suggest that the four screens do represent one artist's stylistic

chronological development. The quandary persisted for two years before a pub

lished genealogy of the chungin Hanyang Yu clan, hitherto unavailable to us, turned up in Toronto, Canada

(see Chart 2).18 In the course of utilizing this new resource

for other research purposes, the mystery of Yi Ung nok's identity was at last solved. This genealogy, in re

cording Yi Hy?ng-nok's marriage to a daughter of

Hanyang Yu Un-p'ung, wrote her husband's name as Yi

?ng-nok, recording at the same time the names for his

father, three sons, and two daughters' husbands with

Chinese characters exactly identical to those used in Yi

Hy?ng-nok's Ch?nju Yi genealogy.19 And since the

Ch?nju Yi genealogy, the foreword to which is dated

1858, gives the birth date of Yi Hy?ng-nok's Hanyang Yu wife as 1805.6.18 but has no date of death, it is certain

that she was his first (if not only) wife and the mother of

the five children named identically in both genealogies. There now can be no doubt that Yi Hy?ng-nok used,

was known by, and painted as well under the name Yi

?ng-nok. However, there is at present no way to be

absolutely certain about the chronology of his use of

these two names. Common sense suggests that ?ng-nok was the earlier of the two, the reasoning being that he

married young (marriages in nineteenth-century Korea

are known to have taken place when the groom, in par ticular, was very young, at times no more than ten or so; in this connection it may be noted that his oldest son was

born in 18 3 o) and that as a son-in-law of his wife's lineage he was recorded as Yi ?ng-nok. One might speculate further that the name his own lineage genealogy uses,

Hy?ng-nok, represents that name by which he was

known around the time the genealogy was being com

piled in the late 1850s, when he was close to fifty years of age and presumably widely known in Seoul society as a painter. The reason why his name was changed, and

indeed subsequently changed again, to T'aek-kyun,

probably lies in the area of popular superstitious beliefs, but this cannot be known.20 It is easily demonstrable,

however, that such name changes occurred with great

frequency, indeed with ever greater frequency, in

nineteenth-century Korea.

Be all this as it may, we have concluded that the stylistic differences perceptible in the screens with ?ng-nok's seal and those with Hy?ng-nok's seal represent early and

later phases within the work of the single painter who

hitherto has been known, artistically, only by the name

Yi Hy?ng-nok. All four of Yi Hy?ng-nok's screens be

long to a middle phase in trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri paint

ing. Common to them are a large format, the symmet rical or balanced compositions of their shelving con

structions, and multiple vanishing points. The success of these paintings as trompe l'oeil works shows that Yi

Hy?ng-nok had considerable understanding of the

technique even by the time he painted the earlier Colum

bia and National Museum screens, most likely in the

latter years of the second quarter of the nineteenth cen

tury. His development and sophistication as an artist

perhaps can best be seen in his moving away from the

realism of the Columbia painting to a more abstract ap

proach in the Ho-Am work.21 In light of the recent dis

covery that Yi Hy?ng-nok's father Yi Yun-min (1774

1841) was also a painter of ch'aekk?ri, and that he was

71



Chart 2.

The Recording of Yi Hy?ng-nok's Marriage in the Ch?nju Yi and Hanyang Yu Genealogies

Ch?nju Yi-ssi chokpo, 7-41b-42a:

Commander of [Yi] Yun-min son Hy?ng-nok married a Hanyang Yu-ssi f. (rank 2b Un-p'ung gf. Chun-gi ggf. Ik-ky?m Ten Thousand mil. post)

?p mms ? ? se mmms: it mm am a m& et]

Hanyang Yu-ssi sebo, 4-29b-31a:

Commander of [Yi] Yun-min son ?ng-nok [is the hus- Hanyang Yu dau. f. [rank 2b Un-p'ung gf. Chun-gi ggf. Ik-ky?m Ten Thousand band of a] title]

up mms m^ 0* # imm an* m mm m? m m& m st

Ch?nju Yi-ssi chokpo, 7-41b-42a:

[children of this marriage:] son Chae-gi son Chae-son son Chae-gy?ng dau. [m.] Paek Yong-bae dau. [m.] Pak Ht?ng-yun

Hanyang Yu-ssi sebo, 4-29b-31a:

[children of this marriage:] son Yi Chae-gi son Yi Chae-s?n son Yi Chae-gyong dau. [m.] Paek Y?ng-bae dau. [m.] Pak H?ng-yun

This "?fng" character is not the one found on the ch'aekk?ri screen seals, which is J||. Perhaps the best explanation for this difference is to note that

similar variation is found not infrequently in traditional Korean records and that, specifically, other cases of the switching of these two characters,

which share at least one meaning in common, are known.

very good at it, the son's development is not surprising, because Hy?ng-nok had undoubtedly learned from his

father. The following is recorded in the Ihyang ky?nmunnok

by Yu Chae-g?n (1793-1880):

Painter Yi Yun-min [1774-1841], courtesy name Chaehwa,1 was

skilled at painting the various appurtenances of the scholar's study, and among the screens and paper sliding doors in upper-class houses

many are from his hand. In his time he was praised as having no peer, he was so outstanding. His son Hy?ng-nok also continued the family

tradition, and he achieved an extremely refined artistry. I had one of

his multi-paneled "study screens" (munbangdoj), and whenever I set

it up in my [study] room, visitors who might see it [at first] had the mistaken impression of books filling their cases full. But then, when

they came close for a better look, they would smile. Such was the

exquisite lifelikeness of his painting.22

Since Yi Yun-min must have begun painting before

the turn of the nineteenth century, it is not unreasonable

to suggest that trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri did exist in Korea

at least from the last quarter of the eighteenth century.

Moreover, it would have taken time for it to develop to

the level of excellence described by a near contemporary

and apparent connoisseur (Yu Chae-g?n devotes one of

his ten chapters to mostly chungin painters and callig

raphers). And since Yi Yun-min's father Chong-hy?n

(1748-1843) was also a court painter, as were two of his

uncles and his grandfather (see Chart 1), it becomes quite

possible that further research will push back the genesis of trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri painting in Korea by another

generation or more. To date, however, we lack evidence

that any of Yi Yun-min's earlier forebears painted ch'aek

k?ri of any type. Extant paintings prove that Korean artists began ex

perimenting with linear perspective in the middle of the

sixteenth century in a very limited way.23 But its use was

restricted to depicting the foundation for a scholar's

pavilion or showing recession by the narrowing of a path in the distance of a landscape, or using light and dark

shading to give a three-dimensional appearance to por traits. On the basis of what we now know, European

perspective began to be used in earnest by Korean paint ers during the latter half of the eighteenth century, which

means that Yi Yun-min and other trompe l'oeil ch'aek

72



k?ri artists were in the forefront of this movement. The

bookcase provided a geometric framework most suitable

for the application of artificial perspective. As mentioned before, no two trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri

alike in their bookcase constructions have thus far been

discovered?a strong indication that each was conceived as an original composition. Conceptually, it would have

been very difficult to split five vanishing points among

eight panels, unless all the panels were hung, or mount

ed, as one whole painting. It is important to remember

that trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri, unlike the isolated and table

kinds, were painted as overall compositions. Working backwards, we found it sufficiently difficult to get the

Columbia scrolls aligned in proper screen panel sequence to suggest that Yi Hy?ng-nok would have found it al

most impossible to have painted the scrolls one at a time, and still to have achieved a coherent system of artificial

perspective for the whole. On the other hand, by using a premounted screen or adjacent hanging scrolls, and

working outward from the center and changing his van

tage point twice in each direction, it would have been

possible. A plausible explanation is that the screen format

dictated the method, unless he worked from a pattern, woodblock print, or sketch, likely with a transferable

grid plan. And if the latter was the case, why has not one

survived? To date, not a single preliminary drawing or

other pattern for a trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri has been

found. The fact that the end panels of both the Columbia

and the National Museum's ch'aekk?ri are narrower than

the intervening ones (to allow for the screens' borders), corroborates their having been executed in a premounted format.

Yi Hy?ng-nok served as a good study model because

his four trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri screens reveal different

stages in one artist's development. Thus we are able to

build a stylistic chronology for the whole type based on

his paintings. Because his birth date is known and he must have lived to at least the age of 53 years, styles and

dates could corroborate each other. But without a pivotal artist, the obstacles standing in the way of a significant

stylistic analysis probably would have been insurmount

able.

We have noted that there are 15 court painters within

6 generations of the apex figure from whom Yi Hy?ng nok descends, and that additional court painters are

found among the immediate marriage connections of Yi

Hy?ng-nok's family. This alone strongly suggests that

there were family painting workshops during the Cho

s?n period, and in fact there may well have been a tradi

tion of trompe l'oeil ch'aekk?ri painting in Yi Hy?ng nok's family. Because similar heavy concentrations of

professional painters can be found in a number of other

chungin lineages, it seems safe to assume that in these

chungin families the painting profession was learned at

the father's knee or within the walls of a lineage work

shop. Information extracted from newly available chungin

lineage materials, clues found depicted in the paintings themselves, and the stylistic chronology tentatively con

structed here have enabled us to identify to date six differ

ent ch'aekk?ri artists of this heretofore anonymous body of Korean painting. Since only two of these ch'aekk?ri

artists are listed in any of the standard reference works, this must be considered a promising beginning.24

Clearly, however, we have as yet been able to complete

just one corner of the ch'aekk?ri puzzle. More painters of this genre will become known as other pen names

depicted on ch'aekk?ri panels are matched with the for

mal names of the artists. Ch'aekk?ri painting is impor tant to study, not only in its own right as a major genre, but also because each screen reveals information about

the culture and values of late traditional Korea. Interpret

ing the clues, deciphering the seals, and identifying the

objects and?most of all?the painters is extremely difficult, and it will be a long time before all the pieces of the ch'aekk?ri jigsaw puzzle can be fully filled in.

Notes

Gari K. Ledyard, Ju-hyung Rhi, and Elisabeth Blair MacDougall have made substantial contributions to the research and writing of

this article. Their assistance is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

i. Two sources attesting to the traditional use of folding screens in

interior decoration are Crown Princess Hong (i 73 5-1815), Hanjoong

Nok, trans. Bruce K. Grant and Kim Chin-man (New York: Larch

wood, 1980), p. 42, in which she describes her quarters as having

been "appointed with furniture, room curtains, folding screens ..."

and Kim Man-jung, Kuunmong, trans. Richard Rutt and Kim Chong un, in Virtuous Women: Three Classic Korean Novels (Seoul: Royal

Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, 1979), p. 69: "Then he struck the

folding screen with a fly whisk and called out. ... At once a girl came

out from behind the screen smiling all over her face. "

For specific mention of decorative use of ch'aekk?ri screens in

nineteenth-century upper-class homes see the quotation from Yu

Chae-g?n in this article.

2. Han'guk yesul saj?n (Dictionary of the A?s of Korea), 2, Hariguk misul sajon (Dictionary of Korean Fine Arts) (Seoul: Taehan Min'guk Yesulw?n, 1985), p. 535 has a short entry on ch'aekk?ri under the

alternant term ch'aekkado,k in which mention is made of yet another

name by which this genre is known, munbangdo.j 3. Ye Yong-Hae, former Han'guk libo journalist and Korean folk

art expert, remembers a large bookcase in his father's book storage room. Apparently such huge bookcases were used for storage rather

than for decorative purposes in sarangpang, where the t'akcha is

found (personal communication, 1990). For examples of t'akcha see

the following references: Choi Sunu (Ch'oe Sun-u) and Park Young kyu (Pak Y?ng-gyu), Han'guk ?i mokch'il kagu (Korean Wood and

Lacquer Furniture) (Seoul: Kyungmi Publishing Company, Ltd.,

73



1981), pp. 17-37; Edward Reynolds Wright and Man Sill Pai, Korean

Furniture: Elegance and Tradition (Tokyo, New York, and San Fran

cisco: Kodansha International Ltd., 1984), pp. 96, 97, 132; YiChong

s?k, Mokch'il kagu (Wood and Lacquer Furniture), Han'guk ?i mi (Aesthet ics of Korea), vol. 24 (Seoul: Chungang Daily News, 1985), p. 193,

pi. 129-136.

4. For a lucid explication of the difference between Asian and West

ern perspective see

Benjamin March, A Note on Perspective in

Chinese Painting, China Journal of Science and Arts 7 (2) (August 1927)169-72, fig. 2.

5. This painting was brought to light by Professor Gari Ledyard of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia

University, and we are greatly indebted to Professor Ledyard for his

generous assistance with our project. We are also grateful to the C.

V. Starr East Asian Library of Columbia University for permitting us to publish its ch'aekk?ri.

6. This screen is published in Evelyn B. McCune, The Inner Art:

Korean Screens (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, and Seoul: Po

Chin Chai Co., Ltd., 1983), fig. 50, p. 53. The text makes no mention

of the artist's seal visible in this paintng. We are indebted to Yi W?n

bok for his help in discovering this seal. 7. It is certainly not unusual in Western trompe l'oeil painting to

find the signature of an artist hidden or concealed in the subject matter; see Miriam Milman, Trompe Voeil Fainting (New York: Skira

andRizzoli, 1983), pp. 89, in, for examples. Both Giovanni Bellini

(ca. 1430-1516) and Vittore Carpaccio (1460/65-ca. 1526) signed

nearly all their pictures on cartellini. Louis Leopold Boilly (1761

1845) did a similar thing when he inscribed his name on a piece of

paper depicted on a table top. In China, moreover, the practice of

hiding a seal imprint harks back to the Sung period (960-1126), when artists' personal seals were first used on paintings and were sometimes

concealed in a facet of a rock or the foliage of a tree. R. H. Van Gulick,

Chinese Pictorial Art: As Viewed by the Connoisseur, Serie Orientale Roma 19 (i958):424.

8. This screen is published in Kim Ho-y?n (ed.), Han'guk minhwa

(Korean Folk Painting) (Seoul: Ky?ngmi Munhwasa, 1977), pi. 148. 9. This screen is published in Kim Choi-sun, Minhwa (Folk Paint

ing), Han'guk ?i mi 8 (Seoul: Chungang Daily News, 1978), pi. 164.

Again no mention is made of the artist's seal visible in the painting.

Subsequently it was reproduced, in black and white, in National

Museum of Korea, Han'guk k?ndae hoehwa paengny?n (One Hundred

Years of Korean Painting [1850-1950]) (Seoul: Samhwa S?j?k, 1987), p. 199, where it is captioned "Yi Hy?ng-nok's Folk Art Bookcase

Painting." 10. One of these is in the Chos?n Fine Arts Museum in Pyong

yang, North Korea. See Ch?sen Bijutsu Hakubutsukan (Chos?n Misul Pangmulgwan) (comp.), Chosen Bijutsu Hakubutsukan (Tokyo: Ch?sen Kah?sha, 1980), pi. 96. The other is in the National Museum

of Korea, in Seoul. We are grateful to Ch?ng Yang-mo for his help in discovering this screen.

11. This name change is noted in all the standard references; see,

for example, Kim Y?ng-yun, Han'guk s?hwa inmy?ng sas? (A Bio

graphical Dictionary of Korean Painters and Calligraphers), 3rd edition

(Seoul: Yesul Ch'unch'usa, 1978), p. 421; O Se-ch'ang, K?ny?k

S?hwajing (Materials on Korean Painters and Calligraphers) (Seoul:

Hy?ptong Y?n'gusa, 1975 [reprint]), p. 235. 12. There remains some question

as to Yi Hy?ng-nok's pen name,

Songs?k, which is not given in O Se-ch'ang. In Kim Y?ng-yun

exactly the same pen name, as well as the same birth year, is assigned to the entry immediately following Yi Hy?ng-nok, that of the much

more widely known painter Yi Han-ch'?l.1

13. Han'guk misul sajon, p. 461. These family members were: Yi

Yun-minm (father), Yi Su-min" and Yi Sun-min? (uncles), Yi T'aeng nokp and Yi Ui-rokq (cousins), and Kim Che-dor (brother-in-law).

14. The position perhaps most commonly enjoyed by chungin

painters was, in its abbreviated form, Tongji,s which was Junior Second Rank.

15. For discussions of these various attributes of trompe l'oeil

painting in its Western manifestations, see Alfred Victor Frankenstein, The Reality of Appearance: The Trompe l'oeil Tradition in American Paint

ing (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1970),

foreword, np.; and Milman, Trompe l'oeil Painting, p. 14. 16. Here an

orthogonal is perceived as an apparent acute angle, whereas it actually is a right angle,

or a third plane, which runs

perpendicular to the vertical and horizontal planes of the bookcase

shelves depicted. 17. For more about this motif see Cleveland Museum of Art, The

Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 77 (8) ( 1990) :2 86-291. 18. We are greatly indebted to Mr. Mun-sik Yu of Toronto,

Canada, for permitting his clan genealogy to be photocopied. 19. Ch?nju Yi-ssi chokpo* (Seoul?: 1858), 7-4ib (Yi Hy?ng-nok);

the original work is in the Kyujanggak collection at Seoul National

University. Hanyang Yu-ssisebou (Seoul?: 1869), 4~29b (Yi Ung-nok); no collection in which this genealogy can be found is known to us.

20. Yi Hy?ng-nok is recorded, under that name, as a participant

in the painting of an official portrait of the reigning monarch, King

Ch?lchong, in 1861. Cho Son-mi, Han'guk ch'osanghwa y?n'gu (Por trait Painting in Korea) (Seoul: Y?lhwadang, 1983), p. 181. No paint

ing signed or sealed "Yi T'aek-kyun" is known to exist, and "Yi

Hy?ng-nok" is the name consistently used in attributions of paintings to him.

21. A similar trend toward an abstract style has been observed in

other painting genres of this period, together with the further com

ment that "[t]his predilection for subjective representation was not

limited to the yangban literati but spread as well to the professional

painters in government employ. " Ki-baik Lee, A New History of Korea

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 260.

22. Yu Chae-g?n, Ihyang kyonmun nok [and] Cho H?i-ryong, Hosan oegi (Seoul: Asea Munhwasa, 1974), Ihyang ky?nmun nok ch.

8, p. 19 (sequential page 411).

23. See, for example, National Museum of Korea, Gathering of Government Officials, dated to 1550 (catalogue number Sin 2234).

24. Kim Y?ng-yun, p. 421, O Se-ch'ang, p. 235, and Han'guk misul sajon, p. 461 for Yi Hy?ng-nok; Kim Y?ng-yun, pp. 471-472,

and Han'guk misul sajon, pp. 436-437 for Yi To-yong.v

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Ch'aekkŏri Paintings: A Korean Jigsaw Puzzle