Yi Chaegwan

Biography

The artist’s courtesy name was Wongang, his pseudonym was Sodang, and his family came from Yongin.

His father died early and the family remained poor, although it belonged to the yangban, the educated hereditary elite. The money to live on, including support for his mother, came from selling paintings. By the age of twenty Yi Chaegwan was already regarded as a professional artist. He seems to have had no teacher at the start: he taught himself, yet took on almost any genre. The range of his work is indeed wide. He painted clouds, trees and grasses, birds in flight, landscapes and figures, and portraits were what he did best. He entered the Dohwawon, the state painting office at the royal court, and became a court portraitist. In keeping with the custom of the time, he was also given a military rank and attached to the city of Haeju. This was a formal post, not service under arms.

Until the age of thirty Yi Chaegwan, like other Dohwawon artists, followed the Chinese tradition of the Southern School, called munInhwa in Korean, that is, the painting of scholar-literati. Chinese educated painters withdrew from the court. Their Korean followers, by contrast, took part in court life. Yi experimented with ink and paper, made spare sketches and played with washes of ink, and on this path he drew on the example of scholarly painters from the middle class, such as Cho Hui-ryong, although he himself came from the nobility.

After thirty he came under the influence of Yi In-sang and Yun Je-hong. Later he became a pupil of Kim Jeong-hui, the leading calligrapher and connoisseur of the day. The teacher thought highly of his talent. On the portrait of Kang I-o, a grandson of Kang Se-hwan, Kim Jeong-hui left a written note of praise. It seems to me that this inscription says more about recognition than any official post.

In 1836 Yi Chaegwan restored the portrait of Taejo, founder of the Joseon dynasty, which had been damaged in the Seonwonjeon shrine at Yeongheung. For this work he was appointed commander of the fortress of Deungsan (deungsan cheomsa).

Among his known works are “Plantain and Poem” (“Choyeop jesi do”), “Resting Under a Pine” (“Songha inmul do”) and an album of landscapes from 1837, the year of his death. Several pieces, among them the “Portrait of Yaksan”, are held in the Deoksugung Museum in Seoul. Others, for example “Meeting of Three People”, remain in private collections.