Portrait of a Government Official (1921): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Government Official (1921) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Chae Yongshin (Korean, 1850–1941).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Government Official
• Date: 1921
• Creator attribution: Chae Yongshin (Korean, 1850–1941)
• Culture: Korea, Japanese colonial period (1910−1945)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk
• Dimensions: Overall: 156.4 x 87.3 cm (61 9/16 x 34 3/8 in.); Painting only: 127 x 71.1 cm (50 x 28 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Hanging scroll
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 2020.259

A detail from the museum

It was European photography introduced to Korea in the end of the 1800s that most inspired Chae’s naturalistic approach to his subject.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cho, Sun-mie. Portrait Paintings in Korea [한국초상화 연구]. Seoul: Youlhwadang, 1983.
• Yi Tae-ho. "Portrait of Joseon Period [조선시대의 초상화]." Misulsa Yeongu: Journal of Art History, vol. 12 (December, 1998): 207-224.
• Kang, Kwan-sik. "The Hair and Eye Ritual Assumption and Modelistio Theme for Portraits of the Joseon Dynasty [털과 눈: 조선시대 초상화의 祭儀的 命題와 造形的 課題]." Korean Journal of Art History (December 2005): 95-129.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.