Sin Yun Bok, a representative artist of Korean painting, and his paintings
Sin Yun Bok is a representative figure and genre painter who played a major role in the development of Korean realistic art of 18th century together with Kim Hong Do.
His typical paintings are A Tavern, Boating Scene, An Outing, Woman Playing a Kayagum, Sword Dance, A Beautiful Woman, Hawk on a Pine Tree and the like.
A Tavern, on the basis of a sharp observation and exact sketch, shows the scene of a tavern where passengers went in and out. The picture renders the true life of the tavern with concise lines and light colours. In the picture, a woman is sitting politely in a kitchen where the caldrons are neatly arranged for serving the customers, and a man who have simple dress and manner is looking at the passengers while serving the customers. And it also depicts several passengers of various character, status and attire. All of them clearly demonstrate the contemporary social customs. In the painting, the painter, with a feeling of warm sympathy, put the common people in the centre of the drawing.
He also revealed the idle and corrupted life of the aristocrats in his paintings like Boating Scene.
He showed his superior talents not only in the figure and genre paintings but also in the landscape and bird paintings.
Sin Yun Bok sought the creative motive in the reality and sharply dissected the feudal society full of contradictions, thereby he made a great contribution to the development of the Korean paintings.
