Ryu Hong Portrait

This portrait was made to commemorate Ryu Hong (1483–1551), who in 1506 was registered, together with his father Ryu Sun-jeong (1459–1512), as a fourth-rank Jeongguk Merit Subject for their success in bringing about the Jungjong Restoration, the coup that placed King Jungjong on the throne. However, unlike his father Ryu Sun-jeong, the Annals of King Jungjong contain no record that Ryu Hong's likeness was officially painted and enshrined by the state, suggesting that this portrait was not an official state commission. Ryu Hong, the subject of the painting, trained in the martial arts from childhood, and at the time of the Jungjong Restoration he served in the loyalist army alongside his father Sun-jeong. He later held a succession of frontier military posts, including Magistrate of Jeongju, Military Commander of Chungcheong Province, Military Commander of the Right Gyeongsang Province, Naval Commander of Jeolla Province and Northern Military Commander, and in his later years passed through the post of Vice Director of the Military Training Institute before becoming Deputy Minister of the Jungchubu. The portrait shows Ryu Hong seated in a folding chair, wearing a blue dallyeong robe and a black gauze cap. The face is painted in a slightly darker flesh tone than in the portrait of Ryu Sun-jeong, but the features are rendered purely in outline, showing the archaic style typical of the period. The beard is sparse, giving a youthful appearance, while the set of the eyes and the closed mouth convey the career of a handsome man who lived his whole life as a valiant military officer. The folds of the blue robe are rendered in outline alone, without shading, but the fold-lines are treated with a more wave-like rhythm than in his father's portrait, revealing the painter's decorative sensibility. On the chest there is no rank badge; he wears only a belt denoting rank. The year before this portrait was painted, in 1505, the 11th year of King Yeonsangun, the previous system — based on the Hongmu yeje of Ming China, under which only officials of the first to third ranks wore rank badges — was expanded to cover ranks one through nine, and Korean-style motifs such as deer, pigs, geese and wild geese were adopted for use. Yet in this portrait, officials of the fourth rank and below are shown without rank badges, in keeping with the Hongmu yeje, suggesting that the rank-badge system introduced under King Yeonsangun reverted to its earlier form within a single year, as a result of the Jungjong Restoration. Also, whereas the portrait of his father Ryu Sun-jeong shows scroll-cloud motifs on the dallyeong robe, black cap and mounting, this portrait is rendered simply, without such patterns. The pose is a left three-quarter view, in which the left shoulder can be seen sloping more gently than the right. The outline of the robe billows in rounded curves with slightly angular lines, and the folds are rendered concisely in the "nail-head and rat-tail" brushstroke, a form of expression typical of the dignity and authority conveyed in early Joseon portraiture. The side slits of the dallyeong reveal glimpses of an inner robe and lining beneath, along with a silver ornamental knife worn at the waist. Unlike the portrait of Ryu Sun-jeong, the floor here is not covered with a Chinese-style patterned rug; the use of such rugs appears to have been linked to official rank. At the left of the painting is a caption written by his sixth-generation descendant Sik, reading "Portrait of Ryu Hong, Lord Jinsan, Merit Subject for Bringing Peace to the State through Roused Righteousness, Ga-ui-daebu, Deputy Minister of the Jungchubu, concurrently Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Five Military Commands Headquarters and Vice Director of the Military Training Institute." Although the Portrait of Ryu Hong is not a full formal meritorious-subject portrait, in terms of pictorial quality it is a fine work that captures well the upright yet steadfast character of a military official, and it holds value both as material for comparing formal differences with meritorious-subject portraits and for the skill of its depiction.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Jongno-gu, Seoul

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산