Chosŏn painting up to the end of the 16th century was dominated by court painters attached to the Office of Painting. Their style followed that of Chinese professional court painters, the so-called Northern school of Chinese painting, and was thus variably influenced by the Guo Xi school of the Bei (Northern) Song, the Ma-Xia school of the Nan (Southern) Song, and the Zhe school of Ming China. Famous painters of the period are An Kyŏn, Ch’oe Kyŏng, and Yi Sang-chwa. An Kyŏn’s best work, Dream Journey to the Peach Blossom Land (1447), executed in the heroic style of the Bei Song, is a horizontal scroll depicting fantastic mountains and streams dotted with peach blossoms.

Yi Am, Sin Saim-dang, and Yi Chŏng are the better scholar-painters of the first period. Unlike the professional court painters, who made Chinese landscapes their specialty, these amateur scholar-painters devoted themselves to painting the so-called Four Gentlemen—the pine tree, bamboo, plum tree, and orchid—as well as such traditionally popular subjects as birds, insects, flowers, and animals.

In the early 17th century the Southern school of China, exemplified by Mi Fu, Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, and others, strongly influenced Korean painters, particularly the nonprofessional scholar-painter. Professional academic painters followed the academic court style of Qing China, which was itself a sort of formalized Southern style. The “expressionistic” and individualistic Qing style of the Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou, however, did not find followers in Chosŏn Korea.

Concurrent with the vogue of Chinese Southern painting styles was a movement to achieve in approach and effect a truly Korean expression. The works of Cho Sok, particularly his ink paintings of birds, are noted for their balance between realism and design effect. Chŏng Sŏn, a great Chosŏn master, devoted himself to painting the real Korean landscape. His favourite theme was the rugged peaks of Mount Kŭmgang (also called Diamond Mountain, now in North Korea). To depict rocky cliffs and soaring forests, he devised his characteristic “wrinkles” of forceful vertical lines. This trend, called the “true-view landscape” and established by Chŏng Sŏn and others, was followed by Kim Hong-do, Sin Yun-bok, and Kim Tŭk-sin, who all painted scenes of daily life in Korea with a realism that often bordered on caricature. Of this group the greatest master was Kim Hong-do, better known under the name of Tanwŏn. He also painted many Korean landscapes and was one of the first Korean painters to popularize genre themes from the life of the lower classes. (Even before Kim Hong-do, some scholar-painters—or literati—such as Yun Tu-sŏ and Cho Yŏng-sŏk, painted scenes from the daily lives of commoners.) The 18th century also saw the first serious wave of Western influence on Korean painting, brought about when Korean emissaries to Beijing, the Qing capital, were exposed to Western-style painting and returned home with some examples of that style. Court painters who had accompanied the officials also were interested in the foreign style and began to reflect Western-style shading and perspective systems in their paintings.

In the 19th century, Cho Chŏng-kyu, Chang Sŭng-ŏp, Cho Sŏk-chin, and Ch’ae Yong-sin were among the more active professional painters. Their paintings were mannered and exhibited an academic style lacking individuality. They painted many excellent portraits of Korean dignitaries in a style that blended the indigenous with European-style shading.

The activities of a short-lived group of painters who followed the wenrenhua, or Chinese literati style of painting, should be seen against the general decline of the academic style of the 19th century. All of them were men of learning and genuine taste who grasped the spirit of such great Chinese masters of the Yuan period as Ni Zan and Huang Gongwang. The most distinguished members of this group were Kim Chŏng-hŭi, the great statesman and calligrapher, who painted little, and Chŏn Ki, who died young.

During the Chosŏn period there was also a new emphasis on minhwa (folk painting), a type of painting whose patrons were mostly commoners. Such works were created by anonymous artisans who followed the norms and forms of large-scale, brightly coloured decorative and ritual court paintings but reduced them to a smaller scale. Some of these folk paintings, however, contain subject matter—such as tigers, magpies, and mountain spirits—not found in court paintings. They were regarded as a sort of charm that would protect the owner and his family from evils and bring good fortune to the household. Other themes included 10 symbols of longevity (the crane, the deer, fungus, rocks, water, clouds, the Sun, the Moon, the pine tree, and the tortoise), paired birds (marital love), insects and flowers (harmony between yin and yang), and bookshelves (learning and wisdom). Most of them are depicted in a completely flat, symbolic, or even abstract, style, and the colours are delightful. The bookshelf theme, called ch’aekk-ŏri, originated in court painting and reflected the influence of Western style in its use of shading to create spatial depth in the bookshelves. The result is truly unique both in content and in technique.

Sculpture

By the beginning of the Chosŏn period, the production of traditional religious sculpture had virtually died out because Confucianism had become the new state creed. Nevertheless, Buddhism was patronized by several queens at court, and many small-scale, quiet bronze images were produced. In the late Chosŏn period, many large-scale Buddhist images, some measuring nearly 7 metres (23 feet) in height, were built in clay over a wooden armature. Their gilded bodies are simple, stolid masses covered with loose, yet leatherlike, thick robes. Drapery folds are depicted in a formalized, schematic series of plaits.

Secular sculpture included the series of stone statues of civil and military officers and animals that were erected in front of the tombs of members of the royal family and other dignitaries. In size they range from one to more than two metres in height. Early Chosŏn stone figures suggested the roundness of the human body, but from about 1600 they were stiff, square columns with oversized heads featuring bulging eyes, a large mouth, and high cheekbones. Some figures of the late 18th and early 19th century show an increased sense of realism.

Decorative arts

Although a wide variety of decorative arts flourished in the Chosŏn period, the making of pottery and porcelain was especially important. One of the most popular types of ceramic ware produced was called punch’ŏng, the Korean term for a type of pottery known in Japan as mishima. The Korean term is a contracted form of punjang hoech’ŏng sagĭ, or slip-decorated celadon. The slip-decoration includes inlaid, incised, and stamped patterns filled with white clay, and also the overall application of a white coating under the celadon glaze. Incision and painting in underglaze iron also are applied at times over the white coating. The technique evolved (or degenerated) from Koryŏ inlaid celadon, which had become coarse and rough in its final stages. The early Chosŏn potters invented a new device to produce the inlay effect more quickly and easily. A wooden or clay stamp with tiny embossed dots was used to produce designs of closely spaced depressed dots over the entire surface of a vessel in a matter of minutes. White clay was then rubbed into the dots and the excess clay wiped off. Some Chosŏn pieces were made using the traditional inlay technique, and they can be instantly distinguished from late Koryŏ wares by their crude and unsophisticated designs (floral as well as animal) and the stained grayish green colour of their glaze.

The predominant punch’ŏng shapes are small or medium-size wine bottles and tea and rice bowls. Many were produced under orders from government offices, but their mass production suggests that there may have been increasing demand from the general public. Punch’ŏng pottery was loved by Japanese masters of the tea ceremony. The Hideyoshi invasion put an end to the lingering Koryŏ inlaid celadon once and for all. The punch’ŏng stamping technique, however, is still used on the island of Okinawa, south of Japan.

White porcelain, which may have been inspired by the Yuan and Ming blue-and-white porcelain ware of China, has remained as the most practical ware for ordinary Koreans. White porcelain wares of the pre-16th-century Chosŏn dynasty are covered with a milky-white devitrified glaze. They were produced at hundreds of central and local kilns, but the best pieces came from the Kwangju kilns south of Seoul during the 15th century. Besides being the most commonly used, white porcelain alone was permitted as ritual ware for Confucian rites and ancestor worship.

Blue-and-white porcelain, inspired by early Ming models, appeared in Chosŏn Korea by the mid-15th century, and Chosŏn potters soon developed a distinct Korean or Chosŏn style of blue-and-white wares. Vessel forms are sturdy and simple; and the decoration, which is naive and refreshing, is kept to a minimum to emphasize the white background—a design tendency also observed on Chosŏn white porcelain with underglaze iron or copper decoration. Chosŏn blue-and-white wares were produced by government-operated kilns in the Kwangju area near Seoul, mainly for palace and high government officials. In later years, vessels of low quality became accessible to commoners.