Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait of a Government Official
Chae YongshinLinkedCulture matchlcp-d25bef9aba9d
- Date
- 1921
- Medium
- Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
- Culture
- Korea, Japanese colonial period (1910−1945)
- Department
- Korean Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Object ID
- 374816
From the Cleveland Museum of Art record
Wearing a dark green court uniform, a man is seated in a chair covered with a leopard skin, a gift from the royal court to a newly appointed officer. The embroidered rank badge with a design of a single flying crane identifies the sitter’s bureaucratic status: the third ranked officer. In this work, the painter Chae Yongshin (1850–1941) rendered a newly promoted government official's shy smile, giving a glimpse into his mixed feelings of confidence and anxiety about his future professional career. It was European photography introduced to Korea in the end of the 1800s that most inspired Chae’s naturalistic approach to his subject.
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Provenance & credit
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- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Provenance
- early 1960s–2019: Dr. Poul Stengaard Hansen [1919–2019], by descent to his daughter | 2019–2020: (Kang Collection of Korean Art, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art) | 2020–: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
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