Books and Scholars’ Accouterments

late 1800s

Books and Scholars’ Accouterments, late 1800s. Yi Taek-gyun (Korean, 1808-after 1883). Ten-panel folding screen; ink and color on silk; overall: 197.5 x 395 cm (77 3/4 x 155 1/2 in.); painting only: 139.3 x 330.8 cm (54 13/16 x 130 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 2011.37 First produced around the second half of the eighteenth century, chaekgado (literally, “pictures of bookshelves”) flourished throughout the 1800s as a royal emblem. And soon this pictorial genre became a popular furnishing item for aristocrats' elegant studies. The third panel from the right bears a hidden seal that reveals the artist: Yi Taek-gyun, a prominent court artist active in the late 1800s. A convincing hypothesis that connects the Korean chaekgado tradition with the Renaissance tradition of illusionistic studiolo through the technique of trompe-l'œil and Chinese Qing period treasured cabinet paintings was first made in Park Shim-eun's thesis (2002).