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Yi Chae
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Bright emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Quiet emotions
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Sombre emotions
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Yi Chae
Date
1892
Description
Creator of the image: Unknown
Date of the image creation: 1892
Medium of the image: pigment on silk
Person depicted: Yi Chae
This scroll painting depicts the scholar Yi Chae (1745–1820). It was created in the fifth and final century of the Kingdom of Joseon — now Korea. Yi Chae is depicted at age 57. He dons the semi-transparent, black horse-hair hat and the white coat of a Korean Confucian scholar. As a long-serving official, who worked with three different monarchs, Yi Chae chose to be represented in his scholarly attire, rather than the more common official government uniform.
Calligraphy surrounds Yi Chae, with various inscriptions in Chinese characters, which give additional details about his life. They describe him as a man of clarity and ingenuity, eminence and dignity. One of the inscriptions reads: ‘He does not think of himself as lofty, but he towers over the mundane world. He does not consider himself to be pure, but purity resides within him’.
Yi looks directly ahead, a rare portrait position from the era. His lucid eyes stare forward and are captured in great detail. In eighteenth-century Joeseon, the eyes were considered the window to the internal moral universe of the subject, and so were often the focal point for portraits from this period. His face is rendered in exceptional detail, with numerous short strokes giving a sense of texture, and use of light and shadow give a sense of volume. The face and clothes were depicted using a Korean painting technique called baechae, or ‘reverse colouring’. This involves painting on the backside of the material, so as to help the colour pigment bond to the front surface, while allowing a subtle transparency and depth to the overall colour effect. Given its detail and masterful skill, this painting is designated as the 1,483rd National Treasure of Korea. It is held in the National Museum of Korea.
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