《평생도(平生圖)》의 제작 경향과 변화 양상: 도상과 화풍의 전승과 변용의 관점에서

Abstract

Pyeongsaeng-do (平生圖), the Painting of a Person’s Life, is a series of paintings depicting the ideal life of a yangban aristocrat who enjoyed a successful career as a high official. The painting emerged in the second half of the 18th century when the expression of family awareness and ancestral worship was extraordinarily enhanced among the powerful bureaucratic clans in Hanyang. Most of the paintings are eight- or ten- panel folding screens, which depict rituals taking place throughout life such as the first birthday, marriage, and the 60th birthday, the 60th wedding anniversary as well as public life of a government official from starting for a new post to promoting to higher official positions. In addition daily life and custom of literati including studying at a village school, sitting in the civil service examination, enjoying leisurely life after retirement are often depicted. With the vivid illustration of the exemplary life of the upper class, various scenes delivering daily life, rituals, and festivities of yangban noblemen, Pyeongsaeng-do is considered commemorative and documentary painting as well as genre painting of scholars. The complicated nature of the painting and its socio-political significance has drawn great scholarly attention in its iconography, production, and its stylistic development. Despite its importance as the visual material to uncover the changes of the late Joseon society, little is known about the painting’s history, authorship, and iconographic origins. Previous scholarship suggests that the development of this genre was indebted to Kim Hongdo, the eminent court painter in the 18th century and Hong Isang and Hong Gyehui, the protagonists of the paintings, played a specific role in their production. But the questions remain; how the names of Hong Isang and Hong Gyehui were attached to the screens painted in the 19th century, how we can explain the discrepancies between the real life of the protagonists and the depicted scenes on the screen, what’s the role of Kim Hongdo’s style in the spread of this genre, how this genre was evolved in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and what these changes tell about the visual culture of the transitional period of Joseon dynasty. To delve into the above questions I conduct iconographic research to identify the various scenes of surviving works and then provide an approximate date of the Painting of Modang Hong Isang’s Life through formal analysis. Painting of Modang Hong Isang’s Life is reminiscent of Kim Hongdo’s genre painting but the double outlines to applied clothes, shading to columns, roof tiles, and temporary tents reflect the style of the first half of the 19th century, By investigating the rise of powerful Pungsang Hong Family by the strong support of King Jeongjo(r. 1776-1800), I find that the reverence of Hong Isang, a legendary restorer of Hong Family, lead to commemorative projects including the compilation of chronological biography, anthology, and genealogical record, along with the commission of a painting of the person’s life, Pyeongsaeng-do. A close look at the socio-political geography in the late 18th century sheds light on the understanding of the nuanced relationship between the Painting of Modang Hong Isang’s Life and Hong Isang. The final chapter is dedicated to the last stage of Pyeongsaeng-do, which takes place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While paintings illustrating more personalized life were produced for military officials or gentry outside the capital, a lithograph version of the Pyeongsaeng-do was circulated as a commodity in the early 20th century. The style and iconography have been transmitted over the various media for ages but their functions, symbolic meanings, and patterns of consumption have been drastically changed.