Yun Tusŏ

Biography

The gwageo examination of Joseon-era Korea opened the way to a career in the state administration, and it was not easy to pass. Yun Tusŏ passed it, and that is all we know about his relationship to an official career: he went no further.

He was born in the summer of 1668 in Hanseongbu, the capital of Joseon, and died there on 21 December 1715, at the age of forty-seven. Sources disagree on the month of his birth, giving June and July, so it is safer to give only the year and the season. He came from the Haenam Yun clan. His grandfather, the poet Yun Sŏndo (1587–1671), was a notable figure in Korean literature and died three years before his grandson was born. His father was Yun Isŏk, and his mother came from the Cheongsong Sim clan. A son, Yun Tŏkhŭi, was born in 1685, and another son, Yun Tŏngnyŏl, in 1698. Whether this gives grounds to think that the art was passed down in the family, I cannot say from the data available to me.

He passed the examination during the reign of Sukjong, the nineteenth king of Joseon. But instead of service he took up poetry, painting and the study of Confucianism. Besides this, according to his biographers, he was interested in astronomical geography, mathematics and military affairs, so his range was wider than was usual for a scholar-painter. The texts available to me give no details of these pursuits, no writings and no teachers, and I will not invent them.

As a painter he is known above all for two things. The first is yeongmohwa, pictures of animals and plants. The second is the self-portrait, counted among the few high points of Korean art. A number of his surviving works are now part of the national heritage of the Republic of Korea.