Science in an Old Korean Painting

There aren’t many Asian artists whose work is instantly recognizable. As a casual art consumer, (that is to say that I’ve visited a few art museums in Los Angeles and Seoul) I can think of only one. The Great Wave of Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai.

I guess I need to preemptively apologize for my ignorance but that, sadly, might be something of a norm for most. Needless to say, other than Hokusai, I learned about a few Josun Dynasty artists in school but my knowledge of them is very limited.

Despite my shortcomings in the field, I’m going to talk about Shin Yoon-bok (신윤복, 申潤福) who is a contemporary of Hokusai, having been born just 2 years before the Japanese artist in 1758. As one of the two most well-known artists of Josun Dynasty, with the other being Kim Hong-do, Shin was prolific and masterful at depicting the lives and customs of the common folk in his genre paintings. Some of his famous works include…

Dan-Oh-Poong-Jung (단오풍정): scenery during Dan-Oh Day, May 5th in lunar calendar of every year. The two on-lookers at the top left are Buddhist monks.

Ssang-Gum-Dae-Moo (쌍검대무): Two Blades Battle Dance performed by kisaeng (lower class female servants, equivalent to today’s entertainers/show business people, NOT prostitutes as some mistakenly think)

Mi-In-Do (미인도): portrait of a beautiful lady, considered by many as Shin’s masterpiece

The reason why Shin is revered by modern historians and art scholars is because he (or she? more on this a little later…) was the first Korean artist that practiced western ideals of painting. He was a pioneer in establishing his own style, using bold colors, veering away from “noble” themes, and heavily relying on realism. I don’t want to (can’t is more like it) write a full paper on him, so we’ll move on. Just understand that Shin is regarded very highly as an artist in Korea.

Shin’s personal life is not very well known, including the year of his death. So much so that even Shin Yoon-bok’s gender has been in question, largely because of the artist’s “feminine” or very sensitive brush strokes and frequent usage of females as the main subjects. There have been a TV drama and a feature film based on Shin’s life, and both portrayed Shin as a woman dressing and acting like a man! I suppose that such controversial view creates viewer interest and increases ratings. However, this shaky belief absolutely falls apart when one considers the nature of jokbo (족보, 族譜)—the family tree book.

All Korean families have it. I have seen my Jang (장, 張, Chang) family’s entire tree when I was in my late teens, and it is a tome. Think about it. Every (Indong) Jang that has ever lived since around 1050—almost a thousand years! I’m the 34th generation of Indong Jang family, and in the book, I found my name under my dad’s name, my dad’s obviously under my grandfather’s. You know what the catch (& the crappy part of tradition) is? Only sons of the family make it into the jokbo, and no records of any daughters are kept. Damned shame. And guess who appears in the (Goryong) Shin family’s jokbo? Yoon-bok. Game, set, and match. Yoon-bok was a son, a boy, a man.

The painting we want to look at today is called Wol-Ha-Jung-In (월하정인, 月下情人) which roughly means, “Lovers Under the Moon.”

At Gansong Art Museum, Seoul, the caption in script writing speaks of 夜三更, which is 11pm to 1am. Remember this for a later reference, with the middle character “三” which is “3”

This is a part of Shin’s series of genre paintings bound in an album or a booklet form, thus the mark of a crease in the middle. Like many of his works, the main theme here is sort of taboo in that a young man in nobility class seems to be having a secret romantic relationship with a woman he shouldn’t be. The caption in the painting says, “Under the dim light of the midnight moon, only they know what their hearts desire.” (my own translations, please allow for any unintended errors.)

Despite Shin’s vaunted stature in Korean art history, this particular work received a lot of attention for a weird reason. Art historians were mystified about a peculiar part of this painting, the moon. Or, more precisely the shape of the moon. To many art historians, the moon was an impossibility, a mistake, an error not fitting the greatness of Shin. As I have stated earlier, Shin was known for his reliance on realism and depicting his subjects as he saw them. In fact, during the time of Shin Yoon-bok, the entire Korean art scene was dominated by Jin-Gyong-San-Su (진경산수, 眞景山水) school, which refers to “drawing what you see, drawing the landscape as they appear in reality.”

Then, why would he paint the moon in the shape that is not possible to witness in Korean night sky in any season? For a few decades, the art world simply brushed it aside as Shin’s mistake or using his imagination in having the crescent moon “upside down.” This explanation lacked something and left that annoying “couldn’t-poop-cleanly” type of feeling. (Sorry for the graphic comparison, but that’s what Koreans say when something is not quite right.)

Enter science. In 2011, an astrophysics professor Lee Tae-hyong (이태형) of Chungnam University put an end to the confusion in one fell swoop with his fancy science. This is actually quite amazing when you consider all the sources and facts he cited.

He looked at the painting and immediately thought the “upside down” moon might have appeared because of a partial lunar eclipse. So, Prof. Lee went to his desk and started calculating when partial lunar eclipses have occurred in Korean night sky during Shin’s adulthood, roughly from 1770 to 1815. Then, he came up with two dates: August 30, 1784 and August 21, 1793.

In my previous posting, I have briefly mentioned that Josun Dynasty is sometimes known as the “Dynasty of Records” because it left written records of just about everything, including weather. Prof. Lee found that it rained non-stop in Seoul for 3 days from Aug. 29 to 31, 1784. And since Shin was working as a Royal Court painter in Seoul at the time, the August 30, 1784 partial lunar eclipse couldn’t have been seen.

Then, Prof. Lee found weather records in Seung-Jung-Won (승정원, King’s Staff/Personal Assistants Office) Journals that on August 21, 1793, it rained until afternoon, and that there was a partial lunar eclipse from “夜二更 about 9~11 pm” to “夜四更 about 1~3 am” that night. The middle “二” character is 2, and “四” character is 4. Remember above that the captions written on the painting itself talked about “midnight (夜三更) moon”? Prof. Lee was now certain that this was the night of the scene in Wol-Ha-Jung-In. He didn’t stop there. He produced a computer simulation image of what the moon would have looked like at around midnight of August 21, 1793. Shin was 35 or 36 years old.

Similarity is incontrovertible. Prof. Lee went further to explain that lunar eclipses happen only on full moons, and that full moons rise to the highest point in the night sky right around midnight. But the fact that the upside down moon appears low in the sky, barely over the roof of a house in the painting denotes that this occurred during a summer month when the meridian altitude is at the lowest point of the year.

At this point, it becomes reasonable to ask, “Did the people of Korea know about solar and lunar eclipses a few hundred years ago?” Records indicate that they have known about both types of eclipses for more than 1,000 years, for solar eclipses were understood as far back as Shilla Dynasty (7th and 8th century). The curious thing is that both Koryo and Josun Dynasties kept good records of solar eclipses, but didn’t for lunar eclipses, even though a mathematics book published during King Sejong’s reign (1418~1450) described how to calculate when lunar eclipses would occur.

It turns out that Court officials considered the solar eclipses as a “yang” phenomena that happened rarely and deserved attention, whereas the lunar eclipses (the “yin” of yin/yang balance) were regarded as rather mundane occurrences that did not warrant special recognition.

In conclusion, Prof. Lee had not only settled the “upside down” moon debate once and for all and thereby resurrected somewhat damaged reputation of Shin, but in fact pinpointed the exact date of this painting (possibly a day after the eclipse) being produced. Perhaps art critics and historians should study some basic science as well before making comments that they may regret later?