Song Eon-sin Album of Confidential Letters and Song Eon-sin Portrait of King Seonjo Royal Letter Temple – Song Eon-sin Portrait

The Song Eon-sin Portrait shows him seated full-length in a chair, wearing a black gauze cap (osamo) and a round-collared robe (dallyeong). On his chest is a rank badge embroidered with peonies and cloud-and-goose motifs, and he wears a gold-decorated sapgeumdae belt; both details correspond exactly to the second senior rank he held while serving as Inspector-General and Minister of Personnel between 1603 and 1614. His face is shown at a seven-tenths left profile and his body at roughly an eight-tenths angle. The sleeves of a white changui robe show through the folds of the dallyeong where his hands are clasped before him, and the armrests of the chair extend to either side of the figure, a mode of depiction that predates that seen in later meritorious-subject portraits such as the Portrait of Yi Jung-no. A patterned rug covers the floor, and on the footrest a pair of black leather shoes are shown splayed outward in a figure-eight shape. In the colouring of the cap, the front is painted uniformly black while the raised rear section is rendered in dark grey, a technique that belongs to a later period, suggesting that overpainting was added before the portrait's restoration. The face carries a slight earthy-yellow tone, and the eyebrow hairs are drawn distinctly, their outline delineated in deep earthy yellow; the pupils are black with a blackish-grey surround. Little shading is used on the face, only slight shadow being added along the drawn lines of the nasolabial folds, cheeks and ear. The beard is built up with white lines drawn over black strands, giving it a slightly curly look. The changui is white but has areas of paint loss, and its join with the black dallyeong is not cleanly finished; since the restoration is thought to have faithfully followed the original, this likely reflects the original's own condition. The outline of the dallyeong is softly rendered, whereas the folds and contours around the clasped hands are drawn with angular lines, and elsewhere the drapery folds are reduced to a few simple, uniform lines. The pattern on the black dallyeong has largely flaked away, and the pattern of the rug is not rendered prominently. The trousers visible through the side vents of the dallyeong and the robe's lining are blurred. A somewhat coarsely woven silk was used, so the weave is clearly visible, and there is paint loss towards the edges of the canvas. It is difficult to establish with certainty exactly when the portrait was painted or when the inscribed eulogy was written, but the title was written at the earliest after 1608, the first year of King Gwanghaegun's reign, when the temple name 'Seonjong' was fixed for King Seonjo following his death; the inscription on the left also reads 'spring of the sinhae year', which is thought to refer to the spring of 1611, the year before Song Eon-sin's death. 'Gwanggeo' likewise appears to refer to Bangam in Gwangju, where Song Eon-sin lived in seclusion in his later years. As a meritorious-subject portrait of the early seventeenth century, its treatment of drapery folds, the patterned mat spread beneath the sitter, and the seated pose in a seven-tenths left profile are all typical features of the period.

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Where it is

Region

Yongin, Gyeonggi

Designation

Treasure · 보물