Sin Seok-u Portrait of Tongdosa Temple, Yangsan

This portrait depicts Sin Seok-u (1805–1865), who held the senior second-rank title of Jeongheon daebu while serving as Minister of Rites, having earlier served as Governor of Gyeongsang Province. The picture surface is divided into upper and lower registers by the border of an ochre-coloured mat. The sitter is shown almost frontally, full-length, seated in an official chair draped with tiger skin, his face turned to a three-quarter left profile. Both hands are folded before the abdomen and tucked into his sleeves, and his feet rest on a footstool. He sits with both feet placed frontally on the footstool and turned slightly outward, a pose that contrasts with the side-on viewpoint usually given to footstools in profile portraits. The face is washed in pale ochre, its contours drawn in light vermilion. The upper eyelid line is drawn in dark ink and the lower in pale ink, with the outer corners of the eyes finished with a slight upward flick. The corners of the eyes are shaded with light vermilion to give a reddish tinge; the irises are coloured brown, outlined in dark ink and edged on the outside with fine white lines, and the pupils are dotted in dark ink, producing a delicate and realistic effect. The eyebrows are simply rendered in fine ink lines, and the closed lips are painted vermilion and then outlined in ink. The area between the brows, the eye sockets, and around the nose and ears are shaded somewhat more darkly in the same range of colours to suggest shadow. The steady gaze and soft gradation of colour convey both the sitter's uprightness and his benevolent character. His dress is everyday official attire (sibok), comprising a black gauze cap (samo), a round-collared robe (dallyeong), a belt (dae) and boots (hwa). The samo has a tall crown with a rounded top, and its wing-tips widen gently outward into a rounded shape, curving slightly forward — a feature that reflects the court dress of the late Joseon period. The folds of the plain pale-pink robe are drawn forcefully with angular, wire-like ink lines. Comparing the rendering of the face and of the clothing, the face is treated with fine, realistic brushwork and natural shading, whereas the clothing is depicted mainly through bold, linear strokes without any sense of volume. In the clothing, moreover, the fold lines visible beneath the colouring differ from the underdrawing, suggesting that the portrait was produced with reference to an existing sketch, with some modification. The chair is painted dark brown with a wood-grain pattern, shaded strongly with brown and dark ink to bring out its form; the sides of the footstool are treated in the contrasting colours of vermilion and ultramarine, each decorated with a floral motif in fine white lines on a black square panel, giving a splendid, decorative effect. The background bears no pattern, and the mat is painted in a pale ochre ground with evenly ruled vertical ink lines, over which a simplified floral-mat (hwamunseok) pattern is drawn in dark ink. Because Sin Seok-u held the rank of senior second grade as Minister of Rites, protocol required him to wear a gold-inlaid belt (sapgeumdae), yet in the painting he wears instead a crane-crest belt (hakjeongdae) — a belt on a yellow ground decorated with red hwagak (ox-horn plaques) symbolising the red crown of a crane, a type that begins to appear frequently in portraits from the 17th century onward. The sitter, Sin Seok-u, had the courtesy name Seongyeo and the pen name Haejang, and belonged to the Pyeongsan Sin clan. His father was Sin Jae-eop, and his mother was a daughter of Kim I-do, who held the post of Jwachamchan. After passing the singnyeon munkwa state examination in the byeonggwa rank in 1834, he served successively as Compiler in the Yemun-gwan, Vice Minister of War, Right Deputy Royal Secretary, Magistrate of Yangju, Rector of the National Academy (Daesaseong), Third State Councillor of Personnel, Royal Secretary, and Vice Minister of Personnel, before becoming Minister of Punishments in 1859 and then Minister of Rites in 1860. In 1860 he also travelled to Qing China as the Winter Solstice Envoy, and, being skilled in literature and calligraphy, served in 1863 as the calligrapher for the inscription of the 'Haeju gijeokbi' stele. While serving as Governor of Gyeongsang Province (6 October 1855 – 28 June 1857), when the region suffered flood damage he requested relief funds, and at the same time proposed that flood-damaged paddies and dry fields be exempted from taxation. He is also said to have exempted Tongdosa Temple from its duty of supplying paper (jejiyeok), and it is thought that the temple had this portrait made in order to commemorate these achievements. However, Sin Seok-u was dismissed from the governorship before completing his term, owing to negligence in keeping the records used for official performance evaluations. This work is therefore presumed to have been produced after he became Minister of Rites, that is, after 1860. The portrait of Sin Seok-u is an important work that reflects well the technique of nineteenth-century Joseon figure painting, and is also a valuable record whose history can be traced with accuracy.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Yangsan, Gyeongnam

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산