The King and the Scholar

What is the reason behind the popularity of ch’aekkado painting? Before the 18th century, painters rarely ever made everyday objects the subject of their artworks. Sunglim Kim, “Still Life in Motion: The Origins and Development of Chaekgeori Painting,” Ars Orientalis 51 (2021): 83-4. This changed when a new consumer culture arose in neighboring Qing China, and Chosŏn emissaries brought back all sorts of new books and objects from their embassies to Beijing. It was Chosŏn’s king, Chŏngjo, who openly embraced the new art-forms that arose during this time. Sunglim Kim, “Chaekgeori: Multi-Dimensional Messages in Late Joseon Korea,” Archives of Asian Art 64, no. 1 (2014): 7.

Chosŏn kings were expected to be scholars in Confucianism first, and political leaders second. The books and the writing utensils (an inkstone, a cup with brushes and a presse-papier, and an inkwell) represent the foundations of scholarship. Devotion to study is one of the highest Confucian virtues, and in a Confucian society studying hard to pass the state examinations was the highest achievable goal. But in order to study, you needed books. So, when after centuries of government limitations books were imported en masse from China and became widely available, it led to a true “book fever”.

It did not take long before imported objects became a recurring theme in art. With the import steadily increasing, the king started to worry objects or books with the wrong kinds of messages would enter the country, potentially forming a threat to his authority. To promote Neo-Confucian virtues and discourage his subjects from reading the wrong books, Chŏngjo – a big patron of the arts – resorted to a new medium: ch’aekkado. He even went as far as to replace the “Painting of the Sun, Moon, and Five Peaks” (fig. 1) with one. The books and scholarly objects like writing utensils symbolized the virtue of studying hard, while also exclusively promoting the books Chŏngjo approved of. It should be noted that in most of the post-Chŏngjo ch’aekkado the books have no titles. As none of the screens produced for Chŏngjo survive, we do not know if all his ch’aekkado featured book titles or only a selected number. In 1784 he made ch’aekkado a compulsory part of the exams for the office of “court painters-in-waiting”, an office he established himself in 1783. Chŏngjo’s endorsement of the genre immensely popularized it among the elites, from where its popularity spread to the greater populace. Kim 2014, 7-11.