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The spring in her heart And turmoil in her mind Are captured well by my paint-brush Below the words appears the impression of a daintily carved seal, with the 18th century painter’s name: Sin Yun-bok. Portraits of women —
real, observed portraits, not idealised renderings — are not common
either in the art of Korea or of India. Perhaps, it was this fact that
kept connecting these two portraits in my mind. But of that,
especially of the Deccani portrait, a bit later; first, the context in
which the Korean work seems to have appeared.
To put it sketchily, art in Korea goes back a long, long time: to centuries before the Common Era began. In painting, however, it was dominated first by what can be called sacred paintings, with the figure of the Buddha and other Buddhist themes occupying most of the attention of the painters then active. Another major passion reflected for centuries in the painting of Korea was the painting of landscapes — some splendid, moving works — generally called sansuhwa, meaning Paintings of Mountains and Water. Famous names of painters and princes are associated with these. What stands out in all this survey, however, is the fact that at each step, the looming presence of the art of the ‘neighbours’ — China and Japan — can be sensed; is palpable in fact. There were influences, and borrowings, and these went on for a long time. It seems that it was only in the 18th century, under the Joseon dynasty, that a distinctive style emerged which could be firmly called Korean in appearance and spirit. For that is when the painters began looking at the ‘ordinary’ world all around themselves. Genre painting is how
these have often been designated as. In them, began appearing
"such secular themes" — in the words of the book that I
was reading — "as the love affairs of gentlemen-scholars with
gisaeng (professional female entertainers), merchants and farmers at
work, the home life of ordinary housewives, vulgar stories that
circulated among villagers, and even sexually arousing scenes".
‘Pictures of the Floating World’, as the Japanese might have
described them.The socio-political climate in Korea had changed to
bring this phenomenon about. There was search for a Korean identity
and the uniqueness of Korean culture and social practices began being
emphasised. As part of this search and assertion, even landscapes
painted in this Joseon dynasty period became different: these were no
longer the idealised ‘Chinese’ landscapes painted in Korea but
real, observed landscapes of Korea.
I know very little about Korean painting but it would appear as if one of the leading figures of the new genre painting movement was Kim Hong-do (born 1745). A painting album prepared by him with 25 scenes of ordinary lives is considered a classic even today, a window on the Korea of his times. Fields being tilled, archery contests, peddlers hawking their wares, wrestlers locked in combat, ‘goose holders’ holding a goose for the mother’s bride according to established custom, were all grist to his artistic mill. When one sees half-clad women bathing in a stream, their clothes slipping off their svelte bodies, even as two young boys naughtily peep at them from behind a nearby boulder, one knows that, in painting, one has moved away from renderings of royal settings with princes and nobles moving about in them. In these paintings, there is the smell of the earth. The world has changed. And it is to this new world that the painting of the beauteous young woman by Sin Yun-bok that I have spoken of above belongs. She is clearly no princess, but ordinary is not the word one can use for her either considering her porcelain beauty and the elegance with which she stands. A nayika is what one would have called her in our own land. The elaborate coiffure, the ample if simple skirt that almost covers her feet, the neatly cut blouse with ribbon-like tie-cords that are attached to it, above all, the delicate expression on her face as she plays idly with a string of bead-like balls with her hands, all stamp themselves on the viewer’s mind. Who is she, one wonders? An enticing gisaeng-entertainer? A maiden waiting for her lover? A bride-to-be? Does the gaze, turned gently downwards, tell us anything? At the other end, from the Deccan, appears this lissom princess-like beauty, standing alone, head turned slightly to the side and downwards, one hand resting on her narrow waist, the other lightly fingering the delicate end of the long peshwaz she wears. The gold-brocaded patka, tied at the waist with its ends almost touching the ankles, the ample dupatta insouciantly draped round the upper part of the body, the almost invisible — so delicately rendered are they — blouse and clingingly-worn paijama, the stylish shoes from which she has disengaged one foot, the fine hair falling loosely at the back, all tell a tale of their own: a tale of great elegance and refinement. The expression on her small, chiselled face is wistful. But then who is she, one wonders? A nayika again? A maiden waiting for her lover? One can be certain of
one thing alone. That, like her Korean counterpart, there is
"spring in her heart/ and turmoil in her mind". And the
painter has captured the fluttering delicacy of her being well.
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IN the Ed Binney
collection, now in the San Diego Museum of Art, there is a Deccani
painting of a tremulous young maiden, standing all by herself, which
kept constantly flashing across my mind as I was going through a book
on painting in Korea. There is, could not possibly have been, a
connection, but in the Korean book, there was a portrait, similarly of
a tremulous young woman, standing all by herself, which kept coming to
my mind as an obsessive reminder. At the top left of the sheet where
the maiden in the Korean painting stands, a fragment of a poem,
exquisitely calligraphed by the painter himself, is inscribed:
